iOS

Follow the headline link to the release notes, then search for “New Features”. Rinse and repeat. So much to see.

One particular nugget I can’t wait to take for a spin:

Audio sharing is compatible with AirPods (1st generation or later) and PowerBeats Pro. iPhone 8 or later, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation or later), iPad Pro 11-inch, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, iPad (5th generation or later), iPad Air (3rd generation), iPad mini (5th generation), or iPod touch (7th generation or later) is required. (51331268)

One definite benefit to keeping those first gen AirPods around if you upgrade to gen2 or the PowerBeats Pro.

Whether you’re running the iOS 13 beta now, or will wait for the official version to ship, you will eventually use these gestures.

These six gestures represent a core change to the iOS experience. Love this move, especially the feedback you get when you make one of these gestures successfully.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

In iOS 13, integrated into the Apple Maps app on your iPhone, you can you share your journey status with personal contacts in a feature called Share ETA.

The recipient receives the address of your destination and your expected arrival time. What’s really cool about this feature is that the estimated time of arrival (ETA) will update automatically, so you can see if they hit traffic or otherwise get delayed.

Love this.

To truly get a sense of how massive an update iOS 13 is, spend a few minutes digging through this page.

A few highlights:

Hide My Email Not sure you want to share your email address with a particular app? You’re in control. You can choose to share or hide your email address. You can also choose to have Apple create a unique email address for you that forwards to your real address.

And (in Maps):

Junction View helps drivers eliminate wrong turns and directional misses by lining them up in the correct lane before they need to turn or enter an elevated road.

And:

Explore where you’re going before you get there with an immersive 3D experience that gives you a 360-degree view of a place. And enjoy smooth and seamless transitions as you navigate your way around.

Not to mention the addition of traffic lights and stop signs.

And the all new Reminders design, and the new anti-aging battery technology, and, and, and. The list goes on and on. This is one amazing update.

Reuters:

Two app developers on Tuesday sued Apple Inc over its App Store practices, making claims similar to those in a lawsuit brought by consumers that the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed to proceed.

And:

California-based app developer Donald R. Cameron and Illinois Pure Sweat Basketball alleged in federal court in San Jose, California that Apple engaged in anticompetitive conduct by only allowing the downloading of iPhone apps through Apple’s official App Store.

And:

California-based app developer Donald R. Cameron and Illinois Pure Sweat Basketball alleged in federal court in San Jose, California that Apple engaged in anticompetitive conduct by only allowing the downloading of iPhone apps through Apple’s official App Store.

Apple’s take:

The company has said it enforces its App Store rules evenhandedly, regardless of whether it competes with app makers, and that many competitors, such as Microsoft Corp’s email apps, thrive on the App Store.

Apple has also emphasized that free apps that do not use its billing system are hosted and distributed at no cost to developers beyond a $99 fee to be part of its developer program.

This lawsuit is testing the waters. It is specific to the iOS App Store (you can distribute your own apps on the Mac). Obviously, if successful, this would force Apple to change the App Store model in some way.

Wondering if Apple created a sandboxed side environment for unapproved apps, an environment that is walled off from all the approved apps and the core of iOS, if that would pass muster with the courts.

Rob Pegoraro, Yahoo Finance:

Apple talks a good game on privacy when the rest of the tech industry continues to fumble—with Facebook (FB) at the top of the list based on recent headlines. Most of the time those words come backed by sound and smart design choices, but then there’s AirDrop.

Almost five years after AirDrop’s debut on iPhones in Apple’s iOS 7 release, this file-sharing feature continues to enable abusive behavior by creeps who enjoy sending unsolicited photos to nearby strangers.

AirDrop’s default setting is to limit AirDrops only from people on your contact list. To check this yourself, take a look at Setting > General > AirDrop. The default is Contacts Only.

But, once you open up AirDrop (there are plenty of reasons to – Here’s one) to accept files from non-contacts:

And from then on, AirDrop would remain open to accepting a file from anybody with an AirDrop-compatible Apple device (not just iPhones, but newer iPads and Macs) within Bluetooth and WiFi range. And when a file arrives, AirDrop splashes a preview of its contents across the phone’s screen.

The answer is to turn AirDrop on, momentarily, then close that security hole by turning it back off again.

Rene Ritchie offered up an excellent suggestion here. To paraphrase, Rene suggests that there be a timer on AirDrop. Turn it on and, after a specified period of time, it closes back up automatically.

Rob Pegoraro had the same solution:

The simplest fix would be to have AirDrop’s Everyone setting expire after a few minutes.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

Apple is expected to unveil iOS 13, the next major version of the iPhone and iPad operating system, at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off on June 3rd. Now, people familiar with the development of the operating system have shared exclusive details with 9to5Mac. Read on for new details about what to expect.

Fantastic, spoiler filled preview of iOS 13. Wonderful read.

Guilherme, you had me at new standard undo gesture.

Twitter is rolling out a change to its official iOS app:

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1105815777616191489

Swipe left to bring up the camera, take a pic, add captions and location info, then post. Rolling out over the next day or so.

Casey Newton, writing for The Verge, took the new interface for a spin, has more details here.

Benjamin Mayo, on the promise of Siri Shortcuts:

This means Siri can now be smarter by drawing on the capabilities of many more apps. You can order coffee. Control third party audio apps like Overcast or Pandora. Plan travel itineraries with Kayak. All with your voice talking to your intelligent personal assistant.

Except that’s not really true. That is how Apple likes to market the feature but it’s a twisted form of reality. Shortcuts are not making Siri smarter, in fact they are dumber than pretty much anything Siri has done to date. Shortcuts put the burden on the user to do the legwork of synthesising data sources and integrating the apps into the voice service.

That’s the “puts the burden on the user” part. Benjamin continues:

Shortcuts require registration and administration to do anything at all with Siri. The user has to pre-emptively search out every command available in a certain app and then add each in turn to Siri. Registration requires the user to think up the phrase they want to use to trigger the command on the spot. Siri can then trigger these actions when that same phrase is said back to it at a later date.

There is no intelligence here. Siri transcribes the user’s voice and looks for an exact text match of that phrase in the database of voice shortcut phrases that the user has generated off their own back. If a match is found, it proceeds. Otherwise, failure.

And that’s the “no intelligence” part. If I trigger Siri, I can say “what’s today’s weather” or “what’s it like out today” and get the same response. Siri maps lots of things to “tell me the weather”. But with shortcuts, the user does the core creation. There’s no way for Siri to suss out other phrases that mean the same thing.

I think this is an excellent essay, worth reading.

I would add this though. Lots of apps ship with useful shortcuts, and there is a vibrant community building and sharing shortcuts with the world. Spend some time browsing those shortcuts, find one you like, and it’s pretty easy to bring the shortcut onto your own iPhone, even customize it. Definitely a power user move, but one with tremendous value.

Also, take a minute, fire up Siri and say:

“Open Siri Settings”

Siri will jump to the Siri Settings page and, there at the top, you’ll see a list of shortcuts that were created for you, based on recent behavior. To me, those shortcuts are a sign of intelligence at work. And easy to use, too. Press the plus sign to the right of a shortcut, give it a name, and you’re off to the races.

Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

Upon updating to iOS 12.2, users with the Apple Store app installed will find a new toggle located in Settings > Siri & Search > Apple Store. Apple has added a feature called “Find Interests in Other Apps,” that when enabled will offer Siri suggestions for Today at Apple sessions based on your installed applications and Safari usage.

For instance, if you use Procreate on your iPad every day, Siri could suggest an Art Walk or a drawing session. If you use a lot of workout apps, Siri might suggest the Health & Fitness Walk.

Interesting. I like the concept, glad it’s something you enable. Hoping it works with the “Saved Stores” feature, so it sends notifications for the local Apple Stores that you visit.

If you’re not familiar with “Saved Stores”, launch the Apple Store app and turn on location. Search for stores in your area, the click the bookmark icon (to the right of the store name) to add the store to your list.

And if you’ve not visited the Siri & Search settings, head to Settings > Siri & Search and check out the Suggested Shortcuts at the top of the page. Those shortcuts will change frequently, and are a good way to dip your toes into Shortcuts.

This is a combination of two tips, both good to know, especially if you keep a lot of pages open in iOS Safari.

First, there’s this from MacRumors:

https://twitter.com/macrumors/status/1096505486604677123

In a nutshell:

• Tap the “show all pages icon” at the bottom right. This will show all your open tabs.
• Pull down to reveal a “Search Tabs” field.
• Type in the field to reduce the open pages to just those that match the search. The non-matching tabs are still open, they are just not shown in this view.

This is cool enough. But then add this tip:

https://twitter.com/mxswd/status/1097251939480350720

Press and hold the cancel button and you’ll be prompted to close all the search-reduced tabs. This is handy.

Netflix blog:

Since we launched the Download feature in 2016, one thing has been clear — members love downloading and enjoying Netflix on the go. Whether they are commuting, traveling or just in a place with pricey or spotty internet access, the download feature makes it possible for our members to take their stories with them wherever they go.

Today, we are excited to introduce Smart Downloads. Now, when you finish watching a downloaded episode, Smart Downloads will delete it, and then automatically download the next episode. You watch, we do the work.

This definitely eliminates a pain point with managing offline content. If you have a Netflix account, take the time to read about this.

Rene Ritchie lays out his vision for the future of iOS. Some great ideas here. My favorite (and I’ve been cheering for this concept for a while now):

Lock Screen Complications

Apple Watch provides rich, on-demand information, through complications. With them, not just the time, day and date, but everything from the temperature to your next appointment, stock prices to your current activity level are instantly, glance-ably available. And so are the apps behind them, both the ones made by Apple and many from the App Store.

A variety of Android phones do this as well. Some persistently through always-on displays.

Unlike notifications, which bring event-based information to you as it happens, complications are just always there, chill, hanging out, available whenever you want them. And that makes for a huge improvement in convenience.

If Apple delivers just one thing from Rene’s wish list, customizable iPhone lock screen complications would top my list.

John Gruber, on the iOS App Store story about Procreate Pocket:

The whole story is only seven paragraphs long, and one of them is devoted to explaining how to invoke Undo and Redo. This is — inadvertently on the part of the App Store editorial team — a scathing indictment of the state of iOS’s user interface standards.

Not sure scathing indictment is quite right, but I do get the point. Part of what makes a Mac a Mac is that dogged consistency that has held up over many years of evolution. Command-Q to quit an app, Command-P to print, Command-C and Command-V to copy and paste and, in this instance, Command-Z to undo.

John’s point carries much further than undo. Look at the way iOS gestures have evolved from generation to generation. As we move from a home button to none, from typing a passcode, to Touch ID, and on to Face ID, the bedrock gestures have changed as well. Move from one generation of device to another and the basic interactions have changed.

Part of this is, Apple is still tinkering with some foundational iOS underpinnings. But part of this is also a testament to the genius of the designers who crafted that early Mac interface. Such insight, such vision.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

Despite Apple’s strict review process for software distributed through the App Store, it’s still possible for malicious actors to take advantage of loop holes in the system to scam customers.

The latest example is a rather sophisticated and devious trick used by an app that claims to read your heart rate through your fingertip using Touch ID. In reality, the app (which is currently on the App Store) uses your fingerprint to authorize a transaction for $89.99 while dramatically dimming the screen to fool you.

And:

Apple requires approval for in-app purchases during app review, but not for changing the amount (from 99¢ to $89.99, for example). The malicious app may also be flying under the radar as it largely targets Portuguese speaking customers, but does support English as well.

The app has been removed, but you have to wonder how the app made it past the app review process. Even if the app charged 99¢, to me that’s no less devious. This feels like it slipped through the cracks.

I’m assuming Apple will refund any fraudulent charges and will use this example to harden that review process.

Fascinating piece by David Barnard that, in part, lays out ways that bad actors game the iOS App Store, making life harder for indie developers to make a living.

Here’s a taste:

Find a keyword that drives a decent amount of organic search traffic. Obvious ones are keywords like “weather”, “calculator”, “solitaire”, etc, but those keywords are so competitive, and the rest of the tactics so powerful, you could get away with 2nd tier keyword targets. Now go to App Store Connect and name your app that exact keyword. “Weather” is already taken, and Apple doesn’t allow duplicate app names, so you’ll need to add a symbol. Let’s go with “Weather ◌”.

And:

The App Store search algorithm gives a massive boost for an exact match to what the user searched, and the algorithm ignores symbols, so “Weather ◌” will get a huge search advantage, which will help to drive organic instals of the app.

That one example, the “Weather ◌” app, has more than 9,000 ratings. And the “Calculator'” app has more than 86,000 ratings.

Read the article. There’s just so much more.