Is Vision Pro heavier than I wish it were? Of course. Is that a deal breaker? Not at all.

Personally, I feel the heat more than the weight of the device. My cheeks tend to get a bit flush after wearing Vision Pro for more than an hour or so.

A nice gent at the Apple Store in Boulder gave me a great tip when it comes to adjusting the head band. If you feel too much weight on your forehead, move the band up. If you feel too much on your cheeks, move it down. Basically, move the strap in the direction of the weight, and the balance will even out. Also, dial the strap in tight, but not too tight.

I’ve been using the Solo Knit band exclusively, by the way. Haven’t even tried the other band yet.

I’ve been wearing Vision Pro somewhere between 4-6 hours a day since I got it. And it feels fine to me. Obviously, it takes some getting used to. You are looking at video, not real life. And you are aware of that right away. It’s not that you are under the illusion you are looking at the real world. Move your eyes fast enough, and you’ll see the screen trying to catch up. But you do forget you aren’t looking at the real world pretty fast. And that’s the magic.

The first time you walk through your email window is a surreal experience.

Over all, wearing Vision Pro will be weirder for the people around you than it will be for you. People are constantly surprised I can see them, because they are so used to what they’ve seen of other headsets that really do take you out of the real world.

Vision Pro can take you out of the real world, via environments. But you can literally dial that in as you see fit. I find myself going back and forth according to context. When I’m on a plane, you’d better believe I’m dialing out the ugly seats, cabin, and other passengers in favor of Mt. Hood or the Moon. (Or the amazing empty theater in the TV app.) But when it comes time to take a drink, or I want to work with my laptop in visionOS, I dial it back to just the area directly in front of me, so I can see my keyboard and the side table with my glass on it.

(It did take me a minute to figure out how to take a drink of water without banging the glass into my device. Pro tip: lean your head and shoulders back a bit.)

How do I wear it for so long? What’s my secret? The same secret I’ve been using for looking at screens all day since the dawn of computers: frequent breaks. I get up, move around. Grab a drink of water. Go to the bathroom. Take a walk outside. All without the device. Yes, you can wear it on a walk, but don’t. Five minutes away from the device, looking at the real world again, and my cheeks cool back down, my eyes readjust, and I’m ready to go back in. It’s fairly straightforward.

Also, if you’re worried Vision Pro will make you nauseous or give you a headache: I was, too. Every VR headset I’ve ever tried made me dizzy in a matter of a few minutes. Vision Pro doesn’t. I’ve been told it’s the lack of latency. Whatever the reason, Vision Pro is the only headset I can wear and not get sick. So there’s that. I imagine there are some folks who will still not be able to adjust. Try it for yourself and see. All I know is I am definitely sensitive to such things, and I have no issues with Vision Pro.

Apps

All this hype about not having enough apps at launch was way overblown. There are relatively few native Vision apps at the moment. But there are thousands and thousands of iPad apps that work perfectly fine. Will they be better once they are redone for visionOS natively? Of course. But this doesn’t feel like iPhone apps on iPad. The graphics aren’t blown up or fuzzy in any way. You can resize them as needed. And with few exceptions, all the functions work perfectly. The team did an outstanding job of making iPad apps work seamlessly without much compromise.

The worst part of iOS apps on Vision Pro is how you launch them. Having to dig into the “Compatible apps” folder is a bit of a bummer. I suspect Apple can fix this pretty quick. (Along with allowing you to rearrange your home screen grid.)

As far as converting iPadOS apps, I took an app I’ve been working on in SwiftUI for iPhone, iPad, and macOS, and added native visionOS compatibility in Xcode. Had it working in ten minutes. Had it working well and looking proper in about an hour. This will not be hard for most SwiftUI apps. The biggest issue native apps face for visionOS is the size of the market. It’ll be a while before there are enough Vision Pro devices out there in the real world to make the effort worthwhile for larger companies. Especially with older apps with a lot of legacy code.

Speaking of larger companies—YouTube and Netflix not being available on visionOS is entirely on Google and Netflix. Their iPadOS apps would function just fine with zero effort, I’ve been told by people who would know. The decision to uncheck the compatibility checkbox is a political—not technological—one. I suspect they will change their tune in time.

If apps like Fantastical are any indication, porting to visionOS should be not only doable but doable within months, not years. Even for apps that have been a staple on iOS for a very long time.

visionOS

This is the best 1.0 Apple has ever shipped. It’s probably the best 1.0 anyone has ever shipped. Put it this way: visionOS already has Cut, Copy, and Paste. It has multiple window support. It has a file manager app. It has support for external keyboards and trackpads. It has full integration with iOS and macOS devices. All the things people have been complaining about iPadOS not being ready for proper productivity? visionOS already has all that settled. Imagine how much better it will be at 2.0.

Using your eyes as a pointing device is way more intuitive than you might imagine. Within seconds, I was getting around the OS like I had been doing it my entire life. There were a few things to learn, like how to force quit apps, shut down the device, and so on. But taking a screenshot on any device is always a matter of learning the magic keystroke.

Pro tip on typing: Don’t bother tapping keys on the virtual keyboard. Just look at the key, and then pinch. It’s so much faster. You don’t have to turn your head, either. Just move your eyes. I can already type more accurately on visionOS than I can on my iPhone. It’s a bit slow, but for anything beyond a passcode or a few words, an external keyboard is the way to go, anyway.

If you've been using Apple's built-in password manager, by the way, logging into to just about anything will be a breeze. The integration is excellent.

Audio

While I’m talking about visionOS, let me take a moment to shout out to the sound designers. As one would expect from Apple, the visionOS sound effects are delightful. And the spatial nature of the OS makes the sounds even more delightful. Where the sound is coming from is as important as the sound itself.

The built-in speakers are mind-boggling. But since I don’t want to disturb those around me, I’ve spent most of my time with Vision Pro using AirPods Pro. The spatial effect works perfectly and drives the point home that your work is now all around you, not just on a flat screen.

Personae

It’s pretty damn hard to get a Persona you can live with. At least it was for me. The problem is that Personae are so darn realistic, any little thing hits you immediately. For me, the capture of my actual facial features—eyes, nose, mouth, skin tone—were all flawless. Too flawless, in fact. I sort of wish it would smooth me out a bit, to be honest.

It’s my hair the Vision Pro can’t seem to figure out. For the first and only time in my life, I sort of wished I were bald or had a crew cut. If your hair is anything other than very short, it’s going to struggle to not make your hair look painted on your head.

The best tip I can give is to set Vision Pro on a high table (an adjustable standing desk is perfect for this) and face the device with your arms down, not holding the device with your own hands. Get your hair out of your face, even if that’s not how you’d normally wear it. Any hair in the facial region will just look flat.

All that seems to help. Along with having a light-colored, plain background, such as a white wall. I haven’t tried with a green screen. Maybe that would help, too?

Also, don’t create your Persona after having used Vision Pro for several minutes. You will get puffy cheeks and lines under your eyes from the device itself. Take a break, let your face recover, and then capture a new Persona.

For now, I can live with my Persona, but I will likely be recapturing it every once in a while until they can make it a bit better at handling hair.

Entertainment

If I lived alone, I would have gotten rid of my TV the day after I picked up Vision Pro. It’s simply the best way to watch movies, shows, etc. Period. Hands down. Game over.

It’s the only way to watch a 3D movie, as far as I’m concerned. As someone who always hated 3D movies in theaters, because the glasses always made the movie blurry and dim, I was blown away with 3D content on Vision Pro. Finally, I get why filmmakers were so excited about 3D. It actually works when you can project it properly.

(Apple's immersive video content is even more impressive. But five minutes of watching that lady highlining over a canyon was too much for a guy who has been afraid of falling from heights his entire life. Yikes)

Also, I’m very glad I took so many panoramic photos over the years. Even though I’ve never really seen any benefit to them on my iPhone or iPads. On visionOS, you finally understand the value. Magnificent to relive these memories.

Productivity

I have no interest in VR or AR for gaming. I get that’s where these sorts of devices have been used most up until now. But I also get this is why the entire category has remained a niche. Apple is looking to change that, clearly. Not only because the current price of the hardware dictates it (more on that in a bit) but because there just aren’t enough people out there who want to play VR games vs those who need to do daily Zoom meetings. VR gaming would never be a big enough market on its own for Apple to bother with it. And let’s face it; Apple would have a much bigger hill to climb trying to dominate in games.

That doesn't mean Vision Pro is no good for games, mind you. Just that it's so much more than that.

I say this carefully, because I don’t wish to offend. But if you haven’t used Vision Pro, you probably shouldn’t be writing about it. It really is a device that must be used to be understood. And I mean used for real work, not a just demo in a store.

The folks at the Apple Store will give you a great demo. Don’t get me wrong. I highly encourage folks who can make the trek to try it out there. But until you open your own apps around you and start doing some actual work, you won’t fully grasp the potential of the device. It is transformative. I don’t say that with any sort of hyperbole. I will literally never look at working on any computer the same way.

My Mac

visionOS is already pretty cool on its own. But everything gets that much better when I open my laptop and connect it to Vision Pro. Suddenly, all of Apple’s work on Continuity makes a lot more sense. I’ve tried several times opening my iPad next to my Mac in order to run Mail, Messages, etc. and leave my Mac screen for the specific productivity apps I’m currently running. But it was just never worth the hassle to do on a daily basis.

Since connecting to Vision Pro, my Mac now runs Xcode and the Adobe Suite exclusively. Everything else is done in visionOS. And it’s glorious.

Vision Pro, in other words, turns my Mac into a focused, dedicated productivity device. All the other stuff I need is nearby, in windows just out of view until I turn my head one way or the other.

The Mac window itself in visionOS is much better than having an external monitor  in several ways. For one, it can be moved anywhere I want it. Including just above my laptop monitor. (So I can avoid that whole geek neck thing.) I can resize it, move it up or down, closer or further away. Pretty much any way I want. All while my hands remain where they should be. It’s like having a wireless external monitor connected to a stand with unlimited adjustability. Except that doesn’t exist.

The biggest question mark I had about visionOS was how it would be to work with it day in and day out. Whatever fears I had about this melted away in seconds. The macOS window is clear. It’s as big as I want it to be. I started using it for fine-adjusting bezier curves in Illustrator, and I was immediately faster and more productive than ever I had been on my laptop alone.

Give me Xcode (or whatever Apple wants to call a visionOS version of it) and a native Adobe suite, and I think I can stop buying new Macs altogether.

I haven’t tried Adobe’s iPad apps on visionOS yet. I can only hope their versions of Illustrator and Photoshop are far enough along and ready to be ported over natively soon. That would be amazing.

Prior to getting Vision Pro, I was trying figure out whether Vision Pro will end up replacing my iPad or my Mac, if either, and it’s clear now it’s the Mac whose days would be numbered. For me, at least. Not anytime soon, mind you. I’m thinking it’ll be years, if it happens at all. But if I eventually go without a Mac, I would not be surprised. Traveling with Vision Pro and just a mouse and trackpad would be very nice.

Pricing

I always balk at the word “expensive” because it connotes not just that the price is high, but that’s it’s higher than it should be. Vision Pro is not expensive. Even Mark Zuckerberg admitted the price makes sense, given the hardware Apple is packing into this thing. My first Mac SE in 1986 cost more than Vision Pro did, in inflation-adjusted dollars. A Mac Pro or well equipped MacBook Pro would easily cost you the same or more.

There’s no question it is a chunk of change, though. More than many can currently afford. And whether or not you see it as being worth the price to you is entirely dependent on what role you see Vision Pro playing in your life.

If you think of Vision Pro as the world’s best way to watch movies, then yeah. It’s probably too high a price to pay.

If, like me, you see it as an entirely new way to be more productive when working, then the price is downright cheap. I paid less for Vision Pro than I did for my Apple Pro Display XDR, and I can use it while sitting on the couch.

The Future

The three biggest gripes people have with Vision Pro are price, size/weight, and battery life. These are three problems the tech world has been solving since the dawn of computing. Time will fix all three very easily. So it’s not a matter of whether Vision Pro will be successful. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for mass adoption. In a few short years, Spatial Computing will be a Fortune 100 company within Apple, just as Apple Watch is now.

You’re living in the future, whether you know it or not.

I did this, even though:

• This is clearly a Mac meant to be a replacement for the entry-level 2-port model of the 13-inch Pro. Not the high-end 4-port model I am using to type this.
• A higher-end version (perhaps with the rumored smaller-bezel 14-inch screen) could be coming as soon as next spring.
• 16 GB of RAM max.
• Aren’t we supposed to avoid first-gen hardware?

Here’s why:

• This 13-inch Pro with M1 (if Apple’s bragging is to be believed) is going to outperform my maxed out 2020 Intel MacBook Pro 13-inch, anyway. Particularly at graphics.
• My battery life is likely to be close to double what I’m currently getting.
• I’m betting the better efficiency means the fans will kick into high speed less often.
• I’m betting the lower RAM ceiling doesn’t impact me as much as most people think.
• I’ve been buying first-gen Apple hardware for decades and have never regretted it.

All this, for a price that’s $700 cheaper than the Pro I currently own.

And in Silver, of course. Space Gray is so 2015.

This is but the first step in a long transition for the Mac. And it’s historic. My limited experience with the DTK over the summer has shown me that Apple Silicon is the real deal. Rosetta apps don’t feel like emulation. And given how easy porting to Apple Silicon is, most apps will be native very quickly, anyway.

If the more-expensive small Pro ends up getting announced next year, upgrading again is always an option.

Small price to pay for being on the cutting edge of the Mac’s evolution.

There’s no question this online format gives more access to far more people. And that can only be a good thing. Whatever Apple does next year and in the years following, they should absolutely continue to make the show as accessible to as many people as possible. They should incorporate what they’ve learned this year into any future iteration of the show.

But then I’ve seen a number of people suggesting the live show is no longer needed at all. And I’m not so sure about that.

You know what didn’t happen for me for the first time this week while attending WWDC? I didn’t make a single new friend. My community grew by zero. Sure, I had plenty of FaceTime/Zoom/Messages interactions with friends whom I met over the years at the in person show. I even co-hosted a happy hour Zoom call with my podcast cohost Charles Perry. And at some of these online events, there were new faces to whom I could be introduced.

But if I had never been to a WWDC before, I would have spent the entire week alone. I would have had no one with whom to share this experience.

To me, that’s the bit that can’t be replaced. You can meet new friends online, of course. But do you get that same connection? Would I be comfortable texting people I chatted with for five minutes on Zoom a year from now? I don’t think so.

The fact remains that any live form of WWDC is not going to reach as many people as the online event. But why can’t we have both?

Given the expansion of AltConf (which had started popping up in cities all over the world prior to this year), more people than ever had an opportunity during WWDC week to interact with new people and make new connections. The live WWDC inspired other simultaneous live events.

Without a live WWDC, does a live AltConf still happen? I’m not sure.

I’ve been shouting from the rooftops about this for years, but it remains as true today as ever—we need more live gatherings in our community, not fewer. (Once we’re past this pandemic, of course.)

Some of us are just getting started on building connections. And even those of us who have a large group of lifelong friends in the community are always going to be better off expanding that group a bit more every year.

So while the prospect of never having a live WWDC again appeals to many developers (and my wallet), I’m hoping Apple doesn’t agree.

But then I made the mistake of lending my Magic Keyboard to Jessica in the middle of last year, and I never got it back.

So rather than picking up a new Magic Keyboard, I took the opportunity to pick up a Smart Folio keyboard, even though every time I had tried one in a store, I basically hated it.

Over time, I did get used to the strange feel of the keys. And not having to think about battery life or Bluetooth connection issues was nice. Overall, I never ended up loving that set up, but it got the job done.I knew whenever I moved on to another iPad I’d need to go keyboard shopping again.

Enter 2020, with its new line of iPads and a new Magic Keyboard made specifically for iPad. I knew immediately I would want to try this new keyboard and integrated trackpad out.

The new keyboard arrived via FedEx yesterday. So here are my initial impressions. Keep in mind that I have the iPad Pro 11-inch, so the corresponding keyboard is the smaller version:

• Wow, this thing is heavy. Seriously heavy. It needs to be heavy. I get that. Any lighter, and it would likely topple over under the weight of the iPad itself. But it makes the Magic Keyboard into an accessory I’ll lug around specifically when I want to write (as I am now) rather than one I carry with me most of the time.
• The weight also makes it slightly less advantageous to head out of the house with my iPad instead of my laptop. This smaller combo of 11-inch iPad and keyboard is still lighter than my MacBook Pro 13-inch, but not by much.
• The keys feel really good. I still think the new scissor switches have more travel than I would like, but I get that most people prefer the extra travel. So I’m okay with it. At least the keys are very sturdy. None of that sponginess from the old desktop Magic Keyboards. And precise.
• I love the backlight. Typing in the dark on an iPad is no longer a problem.
• I would like if there were a bit more of an angle of view. It’s way nicer than the old Smart Keyboard folio in terms of adjustability. But I’m a tall person. Being able to tilt back even further would be nice. (Maybe it wasn’t possible, due to it toppling over?)
• Connecting and disconnecting is a breeze. The magnets are that perfect balance of strong enough to not disconnect accidentally, vs easy enough to disconnect with one hand. I don’t think I have to worry about the iPad falling off as much as I thought I would.
• Typing on my lap is better than I thought it would be. Better than the Keyboard Folio, for sure.
• Opening with the iPad inside the case is a bit awkward, as the heavy side is on top instead of bottom. But closing the case is very nice. I’ve found I can push down in one motion to a certain point, and the iPad will come to a full close on its own. And I like that it clearly “snaps” shut.
• The keys are not full-sized, of course, so I still find myself, as I always have on iPad keyboards, typing with three fingers and thumb on each hand, rather than using both pinkies. I’ve gotten used to it by now, but I’m never going to be quite as fast on an iPad keyboard as I can be on my laptop. If I moved to the 13-inch iPad, this would not be an issue, of course.
• Speaking of larger iPads, typing on this as I am now, I can totally see Apple making a 15-inch iPad Pro. It would give them more room for a larger trackpad and better palm rests. And an even bigger screen would make for an even better drawing tablet. I’d be shocked if that doesn’t happen in the next few years.
• Now that I’m over the concept of having trackpad support on iPad, I have to say the implementation is pretty darn good. I always found having to reach up to the screen while using iPad in keyboard mode awkward. It’s amazing how fast you get used to using a trackpad on iOS. It feels way more natural than I would have expected. Having a trackpad that’s so small is weird, given how big trackpads have gotten on MacBooks lately. But it’s a very handy thing to have around.
• The super-dark grey is a very nice color. I picked up a Smart Folio (the keyboard-less version) in the new Cactus color, which is a nice lighter green color. It looks really cool with the Space Gray iPad. But this sleek all-dark look on the keyboard is also very nice.
• The rubbery material of the outer shell soaks up finger grease like nobody’s business. It’s going to be hard to keep this thing clean.
• I haven’t noticed any keyboard-shaped grease stains on my screen yet, from being toted around while closed in a bag. But this is my first full day. I suspect that will happen eventually.
• The USB charge-through port is a cool idea. But given reports of how slow charging is in that configuration, I figure I’ll stick with mostly charging via the iPad’s main port. I generally don’t use other USB accessories with my iPad, anyway.
• Not being able to flip the keyboard around back and use the iPad as a touch device while still connected is a bit of a bummer. But given how heavy it would be to hold and use standing up, I don’t think I would have left the keyboard connected for this purpose much, anyway.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this keyboard. It’s not as nice as my laptop keyboard, of course, but it blows my Smart Keyboard folio out of the water. And the old Magic Keyboard/Canopy combo, frankly. This is as good as typing out long blog posts on an iPad has ever been. I look forward to using it more.

Obviously this is a very short first impression, obtained at those ridiculous Apple Store tables that seem to be the worst possible height for typing while standing. So I’ll clearly need more time to make a final judgement. But it didn’t take long to at least know that this is indeed a bit of a step backwards—in terms of feel—for me.

The best way I can describe the new keyboard is if you drew a line with the butterfly keyboard on one side and the wireless Magic Keyboard on the other, this new MacBook Pro keyboard would fall closer to the Magic Keyboard in feel than the butterfly. No surprise, then, people who hated the butterfly are dancing in the streets.

It’s not completely Magic Keyboard in feel, though. It does manage to avoid the sponginess of the Magic. The keys do feel much more precise. Press down from an off-center position, and the whole key does seem to fire pretty evenly. Not quite as good as the butterfly, but better than the Magic, for sure. That’s quite an engineering feat in a scissor switch.

It’s not a bad keyboard, by any stretch of the imagination. And it certainly tramples the old keyboard on the 2015 and prior models. But the extra travel makes me feel like I’m working harder than I should have to when I type. And the extra space between the keys looks and feels cheaper and older to me. My guess is most people looking at this machine side-by-side with one of the current 13-inch models would say the 13-inch is the newer model.

But looks aren’t everything, of course. I’m just gaining a new appreciation for the reasoning behind the butterfly’s aesthetic.

I have never had an issue with the virtual escape key, but since TouchBar doesn’t lose any functionality by bringing back the real key, I’m happy to see the real key return. Combine that with the space now between the edge of TouchBar and the power button, and it has a nice symmetry to it. No complaints about what’s going on at the top of this keyboard.

The inverted-T arrow keys, do, indeed, look old and janky compared to the full-sized keys on the butterfly. (I never thought it was that big a difference until looking at the two side-by-side again yesterday.) But this is a case where function over form is absolutely the right move. I’m thrilled to see the inverted-T back.

So increased travel, slightly less precision, and poorer looks, balanced against the return of inverted-T arrow keys and the assumption of better reliability. (I know that’s a big assumption. But everyone else seems to be giving Apple the benefit of the doubt on this, so I will, too.)

Overall, I think Apple made the right move. But there’s no doubt in my mind I’ll like the keyboard on my next MacBook Pro a little less.

But probably only a little.

But here’s the thing. Apple TV+ itself is not particularly important to Apple’s bottom line. And it doesn’t have to be for a long time.

Take a look at the TV app on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. At first, when I saw the way Apple was mixing and matching all the content from available channels, iTunes rentals, purchases, and streaming services like Prime, I was annoyed. How am I supposed to find shows specific to certain sources in here? And more importantly, how can I tell the difference between what I already have access to with my existing subscriptions, and what is going to require a new subscription or a one-time payment?

And that’s the rub. You can’t easily get a screen with all the content you already have access to. Sure the library tab will show you movies and tv shows you’ve purchased on iTunes. But my HBO subscription? Prime? These are just mixed in with all the rest of the content. You can dig and find HBO specific pages, sure. But they are buried behind multiple layers of UI. And there’s a good reason for that.

The TV app is not an app. It’s a store. And Apple knows a thing or two about running stores. They know the more you walk in and hang out, the more likely you will spend some money while you are in there. If I see a new show that looks compelling from Showtime? I can subscribe right there in app. See a movie that I want to rent? Bam, one click of my remote, and I’m watching it. It’s a smorgasbord of impulse buys.

And Apple gets a cut of just about everything in there.

No wonder Apple is giving away a free year of Apple TV+ to people who purchase new hardware. Right now, they just need to drive people into the app. Apple could probably afford to make Apple TV+ a loss leader permanently, as long as the TV app continues to be the primary place you go to watch content. Sure, it’s important Apple creates some compelling shows to keep you coming. But they can afford to grow their Apple TV+ paying subscriber base relatively slowly. They can play the long game, as they are so good at doing. In the meantime, as long as a percentage of the massive installed user base rents a movie or two or subscribes to a channel every month, that revenue will easily outpace the measly $5 they might get from a couple of million TV+ subscribers in the first year or so.

Compare that to Netflix. Every time I open the Netflix app, I see nothing but content to which I already have access. Netflix will never make any more money with their app from me than what I’m already paying them monthly. And as new services take away non-exclusive content, Netflix is poised to become less—not more—valuable over time.

So while so many will want to focus on whether or not Apple is going to be able to sustain the budgets of multi-million dollar-per-episode shows, keep in mind that there’s a lot more money to be made here than a simple $5 a month subscription to Apple TV+.

TV+ is just one product on the shelf of a much larger store.

One issue I ran into while developing the UI for logging custom and favorite items in my RECaf watch app was the lack of any way in SwiftUI to pop back to the root of the navigation stack.

Here’s my scenario: You start with a list, showing items for Custom Entry and Favorites. Tap Favorites, and you are pushed to a list of your favorites. Tap one of the favorites, and you are presented with a confirmation screen, detailing what you are about to log. At the bottom are two buttons. One for completing the log, and the other for canceling.

Because SwiftUI has no function for getting back to the root, I had no way to pop the customer all the way back to the initial list after they canceled or logged. I was stuck hoping that Apple ends up adding this function sooner rather than later. I couldn’t ship this, knowing the customer would have to swipe right several times to get back to the home screen.

But then I remembered, my root SwiftUI view was inside a WKHostingController.

WKHostingController is just a WKInterfaceController that expects a SwiftUI body view. It still retains all the methods of WKInterfaceController, including awakeFromContext.

So what I did was set the hosting controller to listen for a notification indicating a reload was needed. Then, on my Cancel button and on my log confirmation button, I could post that same notification.

And sure enough, the navigation stack pops back to the root.

I’ve seen other workarounds that use more convoluted ways to get SwiftUI to go back one level in the hierarchy, or to dismiss a presented view. But for getting all the way down a long stack in one move, this is going to be my goto. At least until Apple gives us a proper way to pop to root.

Here’s the code for my hostingController:

import SwiftUI


final class NewEntryController: WKHostingController<NewEntry> {
    
    override func awake(withContext context: Any?) {
        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(reloadRoot(notification:)), name: Notification.Name(NotificationKeys.watchReloadNeeded), object: nil)
    }
    
    @objc func reloadRoot(notification: Notification) {
        self.popToRootController()
    }

    override var body: NewEntry {
        NewEntry()
    }

}

There are simply too many things that can’t be done on watchOS alone at this point, however. So for now, you’ll have to keep that phone app installed.

What’s missing?

• HealthKit queries on watchOS are limited to about 7 or 8 days worth of data. If RECaf does a sample query for all your caffeine, it will only get the last 8 days or so. I need 30 days to calculate your average caffeine intake. I need 60 days to figure out your most frequent sources and amounts and offer those for quick logging. For now I will have to continue calculating this on the phone and sending the data to the watch.
• You can’t subscribe to changes in HealthKit in the background. If you log some caffeine using your phone or with Siri, the watch will have no idea that log happened until the app is launched. That means I can’t update your complication without using direct messaging from the phone to the watch.
• No in-app purchase. You can’t subscribe to RECaf without launching it on your phone. There is no mechanism for purchasing on the watch at this point. I had planned to work around this by having you launch RECaf on your phone just once after installing. That would have been a terrible user experience, but I was willing to accept the trade off before I discovered the other limitations above.

This doesn’t mean RECaf won’t get some great improvements in watchOS 6. I’m working hard on a major update that will make the watch component of RECaf more independent. (You will be able to log all sources, not just your frequent items, for instance.) It just won’t be completely untethered from your phone just yet.

I’m sure Apple is aware of these restrictions and is planning on giving Apple Watch even more power in the coming years. But in the meantime, I suspect fewer apps than you might be hoping will be going fully independent in the short term.

via The Wall Street Journal

Every line of that paragraph infuriates me.

Its one major new product of the post-Jobs era, the Apple Watch, made its debut five years ago.

And the iPad debuted 5 years before that. The iPhone was only two years prior, but the iPod was 7 years before that. And the Mac, well that was 17 years prior to that. See a pattern here? Neither do I. Major new products from Apple come out when they are ready. There has never been a period in Apple’s history with hit major new product after major new product.

Its iPhone business is faltering

A 5% decline on 46-million units per quarter now qualifies as “faltering.” Check.

and more recent releases like its wireless AirPods haven’t been enough to shore up falling sales.

AirPods are a legitimate cultural phenomenon. But that doesn’t fit the narrative here, so let’s point out that they’re not expensive enough to make up for “faltering” iPhone sales. Because that won’t directly contradict your point later in the article that iPhone X was too expensive.

It hasn’t had a megahit new product since the iPad that started selling in 2010.

iPad is the fastest-selling consumer electronics gadget of all time. Sure, Apple hasn’t had a hit of that magnitude since. It also never had one of that magnitude prior. And neither has anyone else. What’s your point?

Look, I get it. Jony Ive quits Apple, and you as a journalist see an excellent opportunity to cash in on the sentiment that “things just aren’t as great as they used to be.” So you gather a bunch of disgruntled former Apple employees who haven’t exactly “had a megahit” themselves since they left and cast as negative a picture as you can, so you can generate as many clicks as you can. But don’t expect me to read this drivel and actually believe any of it.

By the end of the piece, I’m supposed to think Apple is doomed because Ive would rather spend time with his ailing father than watch a Lady Gaga concert. (I shit you not.)

But of course, my Twitter timeline is full of Apple fans with malfunctioning keyboards telling me this is a “must read.” So, mission accomplished, I guess?

Not a day goes by since I wrote that post (I have the tracking stats to prove it) that at least a few people don’t find my article via a Google search, which means people have been frustrated with this issue and have been looking for solutions for a very long time. Some have even reached out to me to thank me for reassuring them they aren’t crazy.

Imagine how my ears pricked up, then, when rumors started floating around this year that Apple was poised to retire iTunes in the next major version of macOS? While many were frightened Apple was taking away their precious music player of choice, I was elated at the chance of a brand new app which would presumably not elicit this same bug. After all, the rumor originally figured the new Music app would be ported over from its iOS counterpart on the iPad. And the iPad version doesn’t have this bug.

But then Apple announced Music for macOS (which will ship this fall with the Catalina update), and it quickly became apparent that rather than a complete rewrite, the app would simply be iTunes with a new name and a lot of its more bloated features removed.

Happy as I am to see the bloat removed, and as much as I believe strongly that you should not throw away perfectly functioning code for no good reason, the code in iTunes was far from perfectly functioning.

So, the big question: Would this bug still be present in Music, despite all the work Apple had put into rebranding and reworking it?

Luckily, I don’t have to wait until September to find out. I’m an Apple developer, after all, so I get early access to the beta versions of this software.

So I installed Catalina’s beta onto my Mac, fired up Music, turned on the iCloud Music Library feature, and…

Well, at first, the duplicates appeared again. I was despondent. I could not believe Apple didn’t bother addressing this issue after at least one-and-a-half years. (In all likelihood, the bug has been around quite a bit longer than that.)

But then, a few moments later, something wonderful happened. All the duplicate tracks disappeared in an instant. It was if Music caught itself making the same old mistake, and then corrected itself.

As of this writing, the duplicate tracks are still gone. iCloud Music Library is functioning on my Mac as intended. And any new tracks I download are being synced perfectly between my iPhone and Mac.

Fingers crossed that all is well, and we will finally be able to call this bug defeated.

I say will be, of course, because Catalina is not shipping yet. Those of you who are not developers will have to wait to get this fix. And there’s always the chance that the bug will return before shipping. But I highly doubt it. I think there are going to be a lot of happy Music users come fall.

With Apple’s release of watchOS 5.2, I see the ECG feature is now more widely available throughout Europe and other regions. That’s great news.

I want to encourage those of you with Apple Watch devices in those supported regions to go grab the update and try out the ECG. Not just because it’s extremely cool tech. But because, well, let me put it this way:

I now have a cardiologist.

That isn’t a statement I was planning to make in my forties. But there it is. And it’s only true because of Apple Watch.

Let me back up.

Last fall, when the ECG feature was finally released, I couldn’t wait to try it out. I’m a total geek for this sort of thing, and I believe health is the next big thing as far as technology is concerned.

I wasn’t expecting to see anything other than good old-fashioned Sinus Rhythm. I didn’t know what a good heart rhythm was supposed to look like as it was being recorded, really. So I was just enjoying the cool animations, not noticing the strange pattern. Then the recording finished:

Signs of Atrial Fibrillation.

Hmm. That has to be a bug, right? Experimental new feature. Maybe I was shaking or moving my wrist a bit. So I try it again:

Signs of Atrial Fibrillation.

This time, I read the rest of the text more carefully. I didn’t write down the exact wording, but it read something like: “If this is a surprise, you should contact your doctor and talk about it.”^[1]

Now is a good point in the story to point out that at the time, I didn’t have a doctor. I’m an indie software consultant in his mid-forties, living in the US, the world’s worst industrialized country for health care. Since I don’t have a “job job,” I pay roughly $500 a month for “health insurance” out of my own pocket. But for most things, this insurance is essentially useless. My deductible is so high that pretty much any doctor visits I make are out of pocket.

I continue to pay for my insurance because thanks to the Affordable Care Act, I have to. It’s the law. And I’m okay with that. Because I know paying into the system helps others who make less money than me have access to care.^[2]

It’s worth noting that having this insurance also protects me against very serious costs from various serious illnesses, or accidents, etc. If I had cancer, I’d eat through my deductible pretty quick. But that’s the thing. I’ve never really had any serious health issues.

That’s actually an understatement. With the exception of appendicitis when I was about 13, I haven’t been to the hospital since I was born. I’ve never had any drugs prescribed to me for more than a few weeks. I barely take aspirin when I get the occasional headache.

This year, I had my first common cold in fifteen years. This is how not prone to health issues I am.

I had no need to go to a doctor beyond the occasional physical, is what I’m saying. Until now.

It’s also worth noting at this point in the story that Atrial Fibrillation is extremely rare in men my age. Less than two percent of people in my demographic have it.

Go figure. When I do something, I go big I guess.

So I found a primary care physician and set up an appointment for a routine physical. It had been a while, anyway. I asked him to take an ECG (an official one, with all the wires and stuff). That was going to cost me extra, as it’s not part of a routine physical, but I told him about the watch readings, and he agreed I should take a look.

The results? While admitting he was no heart specialist, the primary care doc said my ECG results were definitely a bit of a concern. “Your heart is a little fast, and little irregular.” He was trying not to scare me. I wasn’t going to drop dead that day, but something was definitely up. My watch wasn’t lying to me.

So then he sent me to the cardiologist.

When the cardiologist asked why I came in for a visit, I told him about my Apple Watch ECG. “I know, this is new tech. And maybe it’s not scientifically as accurate as the real thing, but it told me I should come in. And I thought I’d better not take a chance.”

The doctor didn’t scoff. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“Oh yeah? Can I see how it works?”

He was fascinated. I started up a new ECG reading, and within seconds, he said “Yep. That’s AFib.”

Persistent AFib, in my case. Over the course of the next month or so, as the doc prescribed some beta blockers and instructed me to continue monitoring my condition, I continued to take readings. No doubt about it. I was in a constant state of AFib. The doctor is still at a loss as to why. (I have none of the genetic indicators and no habits that would increase my chances of this happening.^[3] I just have a heart that wants to beat in odd time, as I’ve gotten into the habit of saying.)^[4]

More alarmingly, I had very few symptoms that I could easily identify. I felt a bit more sluggish than usual (a direct result of my resting heart rate being in the 113-120 bpm range). But I’m not in the best shape, so sluggish isn’t exactly strange for me. I had the occasional discomfort in my chest. And even more occasionally, I’d feel my heart fluttering a bit, as if I had just watched a scene in a scary movie. But it would pass in seconds.

It was enough to tell me that something was off, but probably not enough for me to go to a doctor. Seeing the watch reading definitely gave me the push I needed to investigate.

In trying to figure out when this condition may have started, the best we could conclude was sometime during the previous summer. It was post-WWDC; I was running betas of iOS and watchOS, as I was developing a new app and wanted to utilize some of the new notification and Siri features. (ECG wasn’t part of the beta.) Once or twice, while sitting on the couch watching tv, I got a notification on my watch saying my heart rate had suddenly jumped into the hundreds, with no indication of a change in activity on my part. I wrote it off as a beta bug, of course. That was certainly more likely than me having a heart condition. And it only happened once or twice.

My cardiologist now thinks I was in AFib all the way back then. Almost six months before I made my first appointment. Maybe even earlier. That’s how subtle the symptoms were.

Anyway, fast forward to this January. I had an echocardiogram done. (Basically a sonogram for your heart.) Other than the weird rhythm, my heart was perfectly normal. The fast beating and strange rhythm hadn’t caused any muscle or tissue damage—yet.

The next step was to get me out of persistent AFib. This involved what’s called an electro cardioversion.^[5]

The issue with an electro cardioversion is that while it will zap the patient back into sinus rhythm in most cases, since we don’t know what caused the AFib, there’s every chance that it will come back in the future.

If it does come back, you can do the electro cardioversion again, but the next real step is something called a cardiac ablation, which involves sticking a probe up through your leg into your heart, and burning the areas where the incorrect electrical impulses are happening. When you hear the procedure described, it sounds super cool; then you realize it’s your heart they want to burn holes in. But hey, it does cure AFib permanently, with relatively low side-effect risk.

If it’s all the same to you, though, I’d prefer to avoid that.

So far, luckily, since my cardioversion in January, my heart has stayed in sinus rhythm. So I haven’t needed to go the ablation route yet. But that remains a possibility for the rest of my life.

In the meantime, I’m off all prescriptions, and I’m taking ECGs with my watch regularly.^[6]

All told, I’m several thousand dollars out of pocket, still not having hit my deductible, but my heart is doing what it’s supposed to, so I think I’ll call that a win. My useless insurance will become dramatically more expensive next year, while remaining just as useless.

But still. A win.

“You have all you need to monitor this on your own” the cardiologist told me, pointing to my wrist. “So we’ll know if and when this ever comes back.”

Did my Apple Watch save my life? I think in my case, that’s a bit of an overstatement. I’ve seen a lot of the stories about people whose lives really have been saved by technology. I'm not in their league. My Apple Watch did help me discover a condition that would likely have gone untreated for a long while.^[7] I wasn’t going to die that afternoon. But I might have had a stroke (the most likely result of leaving AFib untreated) a few years down the line. So I’m very grateful to the team at Apple who added this functionality. If any of you are going to be at WWDC in San Jose this June, get in touch. I’d love to buy you all a drink and thank you in person.^[8]

I’ve seen some news articles where certain doctors expressed concern that false positives from Apple Watches could lead to panic, with patients going to the emergency room needlessly, etc. To those doctors, I have two middle fingers I would happily like to extend. At no point did my watch give me any indication that I was in a true emergency. It just encouraged me to talk to a professional about what seemed to be abnormal heart rhythm. If I had gone to my doctor, and the official ECG had turned up completely normal, the worst thing I’d have to say is that I now had confirmation that my heart rhythm was normal. How could that be a bad thing?

The ECG function in Apple Watch represents the best value for money I’ve ever spent in technology. There may only be a few people like me who are helped out by this, versus the millions who will just run the ECG for fun and get confirmation of their normal heart rhythms. But helping those few is totally worth it. Trust me.

I can’t wait to see even more functions built into wearable technology that will help diagnose even more conditions for others.

Tim Cook believes Apple’s contributions to health will end up dwarfing everything else the company does, when looking back a hundred years from now.

I have good reason to believe him.

Branding

Apple is clearly solidifying the  prefix branding for its new products. (The “i” days are long behind us now.)

At the same time, they seem to be introducing + as a suffix. (Suddenly, Teleprompt+ feels ahead of its time.)

tv+ actually gets both.

How long before we just get +?

Seriously. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Come up with one monthly figure. Admittedly, it would be high. Probably a three or four hundred bucks or so. For that, you get everything Apple does: iCloud, News+, Apple Music, tv+, Arcade, and so on. And you get one each of the latest iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, which you can trade in once a year for the newest models. Might sound crazy, but I’d probably jump on that.

Apple is well on its way to becoming a bank at this point. Might as well be handling the financing for its products, while greatly simplifying it my payments to the company into one simple bundle.

News+

To be honest, this is one of the things announced yesterday that I’d probably not bother trying, if it were just me. I haven’t read paper magazines in years. I get plenty of news in my News app without having to subscribe to any publications.

But then they revealed the $9.99 price covered your whole family, and that changed the math for me. Others in my household are avid magazine subscribers, and they pay for a few newspapers. Might as well pay the ten bucks and take advantage of being able to read all that material myself, while sharing it around to the entire household.

The News App isn’t perfect, but it’s not a bad reading experience. There are definitely some improvements I’d like to see (such as bookmarking magazine articles to read later) but it’s early days. I’m confident the app will improve over time.

Meanwhile, I’ve already read two or three 3000+-word articles from a few magazines I haven’t perused in years. I had forgotten the joy of long-form, well-sourced and edited investigative journalism. It’s a wonderful respite from the fast food of most news web sites. And it’s a great distraction from toxic social media.

I have a feeling I’m going to be doing more reading in the coming months than I’ve done in years.

Card

I’ve been shopping for a new credit card lately, anyway. I love my little credit union. But the biggest problem I’ve been having lately: my card keeps getting compromised. Four or five times in the last few years alone. And I’m not the only one. Credit card theft is totally out of control.

The bottom line is that handing over your card number to several web sites, or swiping at terminals all over Manhattan from day to day is a security nightmare. I love Card’s emphasis on Apple Pay. No one gets my number. And even the physical card doesn’t show the card number or CVV. So if it’s misplaced, you just shut it off and get a replacement. (You likely won’t even be interrupted from using Apple Pay while you wait for the new physical card.) No yearly or international fees is a big plus. The variable interest rates look like they can get way too high (if your credit sucks) but they start at 13%, which is—not terrible. My current interest rate is lower than that, but here’s the thing. I don’t plan on carrying large balances on this card. Getting back 3% of all my Apple purchases every year alone would make it worth getting this card just to use it at Apple Stores.

I’ve never been able to find one airline that offers flights to all the various places I travel. So saving up frequent flier miles via credit card offers is usually an exercise in frustration, anyway. I much prefer good old-fashioned cash rewards.

And all the cool software for clarifying your purchase history, payment options, and so on, is a breath of fresh air in an industry that frankly needs disruption.

At this point, my purchasing decisions are starting to depend on whether or not Apple Pay is accepted, anyway. The added security of not giving a merchant my actual number is that valuable to me. If you don’t take Apple Pay, I’m looking for alternatives. So I don’t think it’ll be long before most of my purchases are done exclusively via Apple Pay, anyway. Heck, even the MTA transit here in New York is supposed to accept Apple Pay by sometime next year. (But I won’t hold my breath.)

Channels

When I heard the rumors that Apple’s video service would “include channels like HBO and Showtime for an extra $10 fee” I knew that couldn’t be the whole story. Apple wouldn’t muddle their brand by tying it in with other providers.

Channels is, of course, separate from Apple’s own streaming service entirely. We don’t have pricing info yet, but if Apple offers me HBO for $10 instead of the $14.99 I’m paying now, great. If it ends up being the same price as HBO on its own, I’ll just keep my HBO where it is.

As far as the Apple TV app is concerned, I’m torn. On one hand, so many of these services have such total crap apps (and remarkably, they get worse with every new version) that an alternative UI is very welcome. In theory, the idea of putting all my shows and movies into one place sounds like an improvement over having to remember which service has a particular movie or show.

But then there’s Netflix. Netflix is never going to allow its content into the Apple TV App. And it’s never going to offer its content as an Apple TV Channel. Netflix has all the leverage in that relationship. So Netflix, which I watch quite often, is going to remain siloed for now, partially defeating the purpose of the Apple TV app.

Meanwhile, I have my doubts as to whether the Apple TV App can actually improve the process of finding what I want to watch on all the other services. Mostly because I find the current Apple TV app pretty useless.

I do like the emphasis on Up Next. But in a multiple-person household, where several people are watching different shows, things can fall apart quickly. At least Apple doesn’t seem to be making the mistake of pushing their own content in my face when all I want to do is pick up where I left off yesterday. So far. (I imagine the release of tv+ might change that a bit.)

I do wish Apple would let you create separate viewing accounts for all family members, so that different shows and movies wouldn’t cross-populate Up Next.

For now, I’m remaining cautiously optimistic that most of what I want to watch will either be easy to find in the Apple TV App, or it’ll be in Netflix, which has one of the better apps, despite its many flaws.

tv+

The presentation may have been a bit awkward to watch on TV (I’ve heard that it was much better to see it live.) But I have to say, given my only exposure to Apple shows prior to this was the dreadful Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke, I was pleasantly surprised with the new lineup. I think the shows they described for the initial lineup are interesting, at least. I have no idea if most of them will suck or not (most likely, many will) but every description of a show I heard (with the exception of the Sesame Street show, since I don’t have kids) sounded like something I’d at least try to watch for an episode or two. Compare that to the latest crop of shows on Netflix, and I have to say, it sounds like Apple is recruiting some real talent, and could end up with a higher batting average than people would expect from a brand new service.

Doing 100% original content is a risk. But given their pull in the industry, their rather large cash war chest, and their hardware income, I think Apple has a good chance long term of funding great shows and competing with other streaming services that have no other income sources. If they loosen up that reputation of meddling a bit and let their creators have a bit more freedom, they could end up being the place people want to take their content first.

Most importantly, the shows Apple has revealed so far all have a different feel to them than most of what’s on Netflix right now. I’ve joked several times that Netflix should rename itself “The Murder Channel.” Just about every show on it involves dead bodies in one way or another. (Even the comedies.) I’m not opposed to a little violence now and then. (Game of Thrones is great television.) But after a while, you just get bored of the same approach to everything. If tv+ turns into a place where creative work that otherwise might get a pass elsewhere can thrive, then that’s a good thing for everyone.

Arcade

I don’t play games much, so this is probably not for me. But the fact that Apple is paying up front in exchange for exclusive rights to games is very interesting. I wonder what it will take to propose a game to Apple? Will you need to submit a proposal? Do you need to be a well-known studio? Can finished games offer to be placed into Arcade as an alternative to the App Store, or will it remain invite-only? And will the payout to game developers be enough to keep this alive? Who knows?

Just seeing Apple take an interest in games at all is nice, though. Given the history of Apple and games, I can’t say I’m totally optimistic. But maybe they’ll get it right this time and create something good.

Arcade also gives some insight into why Marzipan is important enough for Apple to release before it’s fully baked.

After all, once you start a game, does it really matter if it’s a “proper” Mac app? A game takes over your whole screen and creates its own UI. So having a simple way to ensure all Arcade games work equally on macOS, iOS, and tvOS is a no-brainer.

Other apps can follow later, as Apple improves Marzipan. But it’s clear now that Apple didn’t want to push Arcade back another year just so our social media and utility apps could be ported over in a cleaner fashion.

On the whole “Not Quite Shipping” part

I understand the criticism that so many of these things will not be released until later. News+ was ready immediately. Card is coming this summer. Arcade and tv+ are coming in the fall. It made the whole event feel more like a Google presentation than an Apple one.

But here’s the thing. AirPower jokes aside, does anyone think Apple isn’t going to ship all of these announced services? Arcade and tv+ clearly require macOS 10.15 and iOS 13. That’s when Marzipan proper will ship. So they couldn’t be released until fall, regardless. Meanwhile, so much had been leaked about tv+ already that they had to go ahead and announce it early. Thousands of people are involved in that service. Keeping secrets is out of the question. Might as well introduce it officially on your own terms.

For Card, I can’t see Apple having an event in the middle of the summer other than WWDC; I also can’t see them announcing Card at WWDC. So if they wanted to give it stage time, why not bundle it into a larger “Service-themed” event a few months early? Makes sense.

Conclusion

As a stockholder, I can’t help but be excited about these service offerings. Oprah said it best: “A billion pockets, y’all.” Indeed. If Apple can convince one percent of its iPhone customers to buy into at least one of these services, they will be raking in the dough. And that’s a good thing, for those of us who don’t understand how business works. Because an Apple that keeps growing its revenue can afford to continue innovating.

If you have grown your audience about as far as you can take it, it only makes sense to increase the revenue you get from your current customers wherever possible. So long as you are offering good things to your customers for that extra money, they will only become more loyal to you over time.

This doesn’t mean that Apple is going to “become a services company.” The hardware is not going anywhere, as is evident from the many hardware announcements made the week before this event. It just means Apple is expanding its definition of what creating a great customer experience is and reaching further into more aspects of our lives than before. If they make some extra money doing that, and the services turn out to be great, then how could that be a bad thing? If some of the services crash and burn, so be it. No real harm done.

If the worst thing I can say is that my credit card will get compromised less often, I’ll read more great long-form writing, and I have some new TV shows to watch come fall, I think the event was a pretty big success.

I was all set to go on a weeklong trip out of the country just one day after the new iPads became available. It was as if Apple knew I was leaving town and rushed it out on a Wednesday instead of the usual Friday.

Now that I’m back, some initial thoughts, in no particular order:

• I went with the 11-inch model. As I’ve said in the past, this is purely a personal decision. There is no right answer to which iPad size is best. I’ve owned literally every size iPad screen Apple has ever offered. For me, last year’s 10.5-inch (now stretched to 11) is the one. As a bonus, it still fits inside my Waterfield Designs AirCaddy travel case. The 12.9, despite being smaller this year thanks to shrunken bezels, is still a bit large to fit into my current carrying case lineup. But I totally get why others want the larger screen. I still think Apple will make an even bigger iPad eventually.
• This is the best-looking iPad to date. I probably should have gone with silver this time around, since it still has the black bezel. But I ordered the Space Gray out of habit. No regrets. But now I’m craving a matching Space Gray Magic Keyboard.
• I went with 256 GB. I will eventually want more storage, but for now, I can load up quite a bit of media while traveling without filling the device. I don’t sync music to it, since I always have my iPhone handy for music listening. Once I start Photoshopping next year I may wish I had more storage, but I’ll cross that bridge with my next iPad.
• Once again I went with cellular. I can’t recommend this enough. T-mobile offers me 5 GB of data that I can use over a span of 6 months for only $10. No commitment. No recurring fees. Use it until I run out. Buy more as needed. If someone offered me this on my Watch, I’d actually pay for data on my Watch. Most of the time, I’m on WiFi. For those few times I’m not, though, having cellular kicks the ever living crap out of trying to tether, draining my phone battery, and so on.
• I love the new Pencil. It’s smaller. The magnet is clever and way more convenient for charging. I never lost the cap on my old Pencil, but I certainly came close a few times. Glad to see it gone. I will still likely use the Pencil less often than I should.^[1]
• I wish Apple made a Smart Cover for this new iPad. Instead they went with a two-sided folio. Not for me.
• I never get the Smart Keyboard with my iPads. I hate the feel of those keys about as much as many developers seem to hate the new generation of MacBook Pro keyboards. To each their own.
• The squared-off sides: Oh man, do I love the way the sides of this new iPad feel. Some people call it “retro” to the iPhone 4 or 5. Fine. As far as I’m concerned, squared off sides are better. The tapering gives the illusion of a thinner device, but once you’ve reached peak thinness, there are many advantages to a squared off edge. (Pencil charging, for one.) I can’t wait until the iPhones go back to squared off edges.^[2] I think this is the future, not the past.
• Face ID: I was right to be scared of the camera being on the “short” portrait side of the device. Whenever I’m holding the iPad in Landscape (just about 100% of the time) my thumb is covering the camera. I tend to hold the device in my left hand and use my right to “swipe up” to unlock. But because I’ve always wanted the home button on that right side as well, I tend to hold the device with the camera on the left side. (Apple clearly figures this as the “normal” landscape orientation as well, since they set the pencil charging magnet along the top edge when you hold it this way. That means despite taking a hand off the device to unlock, it’s always the “wrong” hand for me. Thus, I get the dreaded “Camera covered” message about 70% of the time when I am unlocking.^[3] As I wrote earlier, this could be completely avoided if the camera were on one of the longer landscape sides of the device. But who knows? Maybe there’s some engineering reason that couldn’t be done. Suffice it to say, this is my only true complaint about this new iPad. It’s annoying as hell, in fact. But I will learn to swipe to unlock with my left hand, hold the device with the camera on the right (which will put my Pencil under the device), or just reposition my thumbs somehow. I’ll get over it.
• The home indicator. My friend Alec Pulianas pointed this out, and he’s absolutely right: There’s really no need for a permanent home indicator on this iPad. The behavior has not changed for swiping up since iOS 11 last year. People have had a year to “figure out” how to go home with the iPhone X. Sure, turn the indicator on for the first few days for new customers, but it should disappear after that. The graphic only gets in the way for most apps. I hope Apple is considering this UI affordance a temporary thing.
• It’s taking longer than it should for some apps to be updated to support the new screen aspect ratio. I’m not talking about indie apps made by developers who are working their butts off. I’m talking about Netflix (Took almost a week.) HBO. (Still not updated as of this writing.) Apps with large teams who, let’s be honest, had more than a year to prepare for the removal of the home button. Watching letter boxed video inside a pillar boxed app is far from ideal.
• I didn’t think much of the switch to USB-C at first, but the benefits are slowly sinking in. I’m charging my nearly dead iPhone as I write this with my iPad. Sounds silly, but in a pinch, it’s turning out to be a very handy feature. I doubt I’ll be connecting to an external screen anytime soon. But I’m glad that’s now available to video editors, etc. Eventually, I have to think the Files app will get external drive support, which will be awesome. More accessories will work with either Mac or iPad. I think this is one of those changes that will take some time to sort out but eventually will be a “how did we ever live without that?” type of thing. Not sure if it makes sense for iPhone, but I’d be happy to see that happen as well. I wouldn’t be surprised or disappointed either way.
• Being able to travel with just my laptop charger and give it double duty for charging iPad as well is quite nice. I will probably never need a second charger for this iPad.
• Speed: I’ve never thought any iPad I’ve owned is slow. Then again, why not push the state of the art forward? I’m happy these iPads are getting faster, support more storage and RAM, and are generally kicking the ass of laptops the world over. This is what Apple does. I know some have suggested the RAM is overkill, but when I think of apps like Final Cut Pro X, Logic, and other “pro” apps people complain about not existing for iPad, the one thing those apps need that current iPads don’t have yet is tons of RAM. (Have you ever loaded a set of virtual instruments into Main Stage?) I say bring on more and more speed and RAM until it becomes physically impossible to add more. Here’s the thing: an iPad is in no way a “lesser” device from a hardware standpoint. Which means it doesn’t need to be any lesser from a software standpoint, either.
• Speaking of software: Yes, iOS needs more iPad-only features. Apple is still paying for the mistake of encouraging “Universal” apps for iPad back in the day. I wrote about all that years ago, so I won’t go into it again. I do think starting simple with iPhone’s OS and getting more complex over time was the right move. It’s taking longer than any of us would like, but I’m optimistic about iOS 13 next June. Will they fork iOS into an iPadOS eventually? Maybe. Not sure it’s necessary, though. Just keep adding iPad specific features where appropriate, and share with iPhone when that makes sense. I don’t think maintaining yet another full operating system is going to be a net gain.
• More on software: Apps. Pro apps. Whatever that means. They exist. More will exist. All I can say is when they come, be willing to pay for them. And for my friends making those apps: be willing to charge for them. I’ll be using Photoshop on my iPad a year from now. I can’t imagine XD won’t follow soon after. At that point, I’ll be able to do almost all my design work on iPad. If you have design apps now that are Mac only and you don’t have an iOS road map, you’re as good as dead to me in a few years.^[4] How long before I can say the same for most of my development work?^[5] And once apps like Photoshop appear, look for the gaps in the surrounding ecosystem. I’d love to see Adobe bring something akin to its plugin architecture to iPad. That may take some cooperation from Apple, but it could spark an entirely new market for third parties on iOS. The future is looking bright.
• And that brings me to my final point. iPad has been my favorite Apple device for a long time now. This new edition only strengthens my feeling. I am newly inspired to write apps for this machine. I want to use it more than I already do. It doesn’t have to replace my laptop. It needs to expand my current concept of how and where I use computing devices. And that’s been steadily happening since the first iPad was released in 2010.

Congrats to the entire team who worked on these new iPads. They are truly remarkable.

Okay: Crazy designer ideas time. Bear with me. This is not a prediction of what may or may not happen at tomorrow’s Apple event. Just a thought that’s been rattling in my brain for the past few months.

Have an iPad handy? Great. If not, use your imagination.

Pick up the iPad and hold it as you normally would in landscape orientation. Where are your hands? If you’re anything like me, one of your thumbs is roughly on top of the home button, and the other one is just about covering the selfie camera. Hands are basically in the middle of the device, in other words.

Now, hold the iPad in portrait mode. Where are your hands? Chances are, your hands are towards the bottom of the device, not the middle. Your thumbs are not covering the center of either long side of the device.

Is it me, or is this an argument for Apple putting the Face ID sensor array on one of the longer, landscape sides of the device?

Now, there may be some perfectly logistical, engineering reason why the selfie cam/sensor array needs to stay on the short side of the device. This is why I’m not making any predictions here. But if it isn’t physically difficult or impossible to put the array on the longer side, I think Apple would and should put it there. Otherwise, forget whether or not Face ID can work in landscape or portrait. We may have to take one hand off the device every time we need to authenticate when we are holding in landscape, anyway. Which would not be ideal.

Ever since the 10.5-inch iPad Pro was released, with it’s slightly longer aspect ratio, I’ve used my iPad in portrait mode approximately 0% of the time. It’s just awkward to hold that iPad in portrait, because of its elongated geometry. Positioning the sensor array at the “top” of that orientation makes no sense from a design standpoint, as it optimizes for an edge case, rather than what I’m guessing is “normal” use for most people. (Again, assuming that engineering challenges don’t make this a moot argument.)

On the other hand, if the sensor array were on one of the long edges of the device, Face ID would work just fine in either orientation for most people, as your hands would never be covering the array regardless of how you hold it.

Just a thought. I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong tomorrow. But I couldn’t let this thought go without at least documenting it.

It’s telling that of all the watch faces Apple has shipped since, only the Explorer is anywhere near the same quality of that original batch. All the others are either derivatives of the originals (e.g. Toy Story, Minnie Mouse, Timelapse), obvious examples of engineering over design (Siri, Activity), or complete WTF? (Kaleidoscope).

(Me, back in April of this year.)

I’m happy to see renewed interest in Apple’s watch face design lately. Awesome as everything else in watchOS 5 is, this year’s face additions didn’t change my thoughts on the subject from back in April. Despite loving my new Series 4, I find myself falling back on good old Simple and Chronograph more often than not.

Maybe a little less pyrotechnics, and a little more horology would be a good start.

All kidding aside, I don’t mean to suggest this is an easy problem. And it is worth noting that compared to the competition, Apple is still way ahead.^[1]

There seem to be two competing needs for a modern watch face. On one hand, you have people who want beautiful, elegant designs with excellent readability. They want their watch face to look good, in other words. On the other hand, you have people who want to pack as much information into their watch face as possible via more and more powerful complications.

You’re never going to please both groups with one face.

Heck, I even find myself sometimes wanting to get more complications onto a face, even at the cost of aesthetics. So maybe it’s more accurate to say there’s no one face that can please anyone, let alone everyone.

Good thing for Apple, there’s no reason one face needs to satisfy all our needs. Just as the lack of plastic keyboard freed up the iPhone to provide a blank canvas for each app, Apple Watch has a similar chameleon-like capability.

I change my watch face as often as I change my watch bands, which is just about every day. More often, even. The versatility of the bands and styles of faces is part of the appeal of the device. This is in stark contrast to the user interfaces of any other Apple device, which each have one distinct look and feel.^[2]

In the morning, you can have an information-heavy face showing you all the data you need for your health. In the evening, you can have a stark face that shows nothing but the time.

There are faces I only use with certain bands, too. You probably don’t want to pair Mickey Mouse with a link bracelet, after all.

The original watch face designs reflect an understanding of this need for variety. Each face was crafted carefully, by designers who had spent a great deal of effort learning about the history of timepiece design. The variety reflected the varying needs of not only different people, but different moods and situations. And the designs were steeped in tradition.

Complications were first-party only, few, and rather simple. Which is why so many of those faces didn’t even include any complications or had only one complication slot.

Life was much simpler back in 2014.

The faces that have come since are, as I pointed out in April, derivative of one or two of the original designs. The same hands, with various different backgrounds. Or, in the case of the Siri watch face, great tech demos that nevertheless look less than desirable.

Even the latest Infographic faces on the Series 4 watches are just less-attractive variations of Modular and and Simple.

Meanwhile, in the intervening years since those original designs, as complications became the primary way people get information from their apps, the demand for more and more complications—and more capabilities for those complications—grew. So with some faces, Apple is trying to pack in more and more of this complexity. The result, as with the Siri face, is less than desirable. Overloaded with color and text running in various directions, these faces match almost no band, and they make reading anything an exercise in distraction. I’ve tried for several days now to make either Infographic face look good to my eyes, and I’ve given up. The garish colors are just too much to bear. Even if I leave half the slots empty, there’s just too much to look at in one glance.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have new watch faces that are simply animated backgrounds of different varieties. Most of these offer few, if any complications. Sometimes for no good reason. They end up being novelties you try out for a few hours at most. But they aren’t really useful, ultimately. Some, such as Fire and Water, or Vapor, actually make it difficult to tell the time.^[3]

So what can Apple do here? It’s not as if people are going to start demanding less power in their watch face. But I think Apple can certainly rise to the challenge of making new faces that balance elegance with capability. They just need to invest time and effort on the endeavor. Leave the current faces as they are, and bring in some fresh ideas, so they can design new faces in the spirit of what Apple Watch has become, rather than continuing to staple new functionality onto older designs that represent the limitations of five years ago.

Find some of the best mechanical watch face designers in the industry, bring them in house, and lock them in a room until next summer with the rest of Apple’s interface design team. I really think a fresh start is all they need.

Apple Watch Series 4 is a huge step up, in terms of a device that looks and feels more like jewelry than a computer on your wrist. Now the face(s) just need to catch up.