<blockquote>
With Mountain Lion, Apple has stepped up the game of brining the two ecosystems of Mac and iOS closer together. The trend started (arguably perhaps) with Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event in which iLife was touted to have taken cues from iOS design, FaceTime was brought to the Mac, the Mac App store was announced, the MacBook Air was introduced, and oh yeah, Lion was announced with many features reminiscent of iOS.
</blockquote>
My article on where Apple is headed with OS X. Head on over to find out what I think about where Apple is going.

In which I write about the future of OS X

The iOS-ification of OS X

<h2>Great iOS Apps</h2>
One of the things that I really love about iOS is the app explosion that has taken place. There are some first class third party apps for iOS out there. Some of my favorites are <a href="http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/">Tweetbot</a>, <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/iphone">Instapaper</a>, <a href="http://reederapp.com/2/">Reeder</a>, and <a href="http://vemedio.com/products/instacast">Instacast</a>.
Honorable mentions, <a href="http://www.olivetree.com/iphone/">Olive Tree Bible Reader</a> (although the auto play video on their site when I looked them up just now took them down a peg in my mind, horrible!), <a href="http://www.loseit.com/">Loose It!</a>, <a href="http://www.snapseed.com/">Snapseed</a>, <a href="http://www.beejive.com/">BeejiveIM</a> (great app which I’m now retiring in favor of going all iMessage).
But one thing bothers me: sometimes these great apps don’t have OS X counterparts. Some do of course, such as Reeder. Reeder was pioneered on iOS and then made it’s way to OS X, and it’s awesome! I could not ask for a better RSS client that stays in sync across all my devices by syncing with Google Reader. Snapseed also just came to the Mac, though I haven’t tried that app on Mac yet.
But there are apps among these that I really want an OS X counterpart for. Top of the list is Instacast.
<h3>Instacast</h3>
Instacast is a great podcast client, and it uses iCloud to sync podcast subscriptions and playback positions between devices… iOS devices. But as much as I love iOS, and think that iOS is the future, the Mac is not dead, and will not be for a long time, if ever. The bulk of my work is done on my Mac. I would love to be able to pick up a podcast right where I left off on my iPhone, on my Mac.
<h3>Tweetbot</h3>
Tweetbot is the best Twitter client, period. Not just the best on iOS, the best Twitter client of any platform combined. But there is no Mac client. I finally broke down and bought <a href="http://osfoora.com/mac/">Osfoora for Mac</a>, and it’s about the closest, but it is no Tweetbot. I would love for Tapbots to bring Tweetbot to Mac.
<h3>Instapaper</h3>
Probably 80% of the things I post here go through Instapaper. Instapaper is awesome, the iOS app is really awesome. But there is no Mac app. I’d pay at least as much or more for a Mac App as I did for the iPhone app. Right now, I’m using <a href="http://mischneider.net/readnowapp/">Read Now</a>, which has been pulled from the Mac App store apparently as I just found out when looking up the link, because of an infringement letter (doggone patent and copyright garbage again). In any event, even if Read Now were still available and being updated, I would switch to an official Mac Instapaper app in a cold minute.
<h2>It goes the other way too</h2>
There are some great apps on the Mac that I would dearly love to have on iOS.
<h3>iBiz</h3>
<a href="http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibiz/index.php">iBiz</a> is a great small business app that I use constantly on Mac, but I would love to have an iOS app that would sync with the Mac app.
<h3>MarsEdit</h3>
Almost everything I post here goes through <a href="http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/">MarsEdit</a>. It’s a great desktop blogging application that works well with many blogging platforms, including (of course since I use it) ExpressionEngine. I have attempted to find a good blogging app for iPhone but I have not been able to do so, and I’ve tried several. I thought I had actually landed something good with <a href="http://www.rwe-uk.com/iexpression/app">iExpression</a> made specifically for ExpressionEngine. But it turns out it’s nothing but a pain in the rear quarters. It never works the way it’s supposed to. Right now, if Red Sweater would make an iOS version of MarsEdit, I would buy it immediately.
<h3>Mou</h3>
If I’m not writing in MarsEdit, I’m probably writing in <a href="http://mouapp.com/">Mou</a>. As far as I know, there is no iPhone equivalent. I would be very happy to see Mou come to iOS.
<h2>Please</h2>
So in conclusion, I would really love to see developers with a little more cooperation between Mac and iOS apps. So, dear developers, please?

Mac Apps and iOS Apps

<img src="http://appleuserpro.com/assets/uploads/ipad-phantom-keys.jpg" alt="Ipad phantom keys" title="ipad-phantom-keys.jpg">
<blockquote>
The iPad’s split keyboard has phantom buttons. If you’re used to typing Y with your left hand, you can.
</blockquote>
I love the attention to detail that Apple puts into these things.

FinerThingsIn.com

iPad’s split keyboard has phantom buttons

<blockquote>
The best iPhone Twitter app comes to the iPad. I sure wish they would make a Mac version…
</blockquote>
No kidding. Not having an iPad, I can’t comment on the iPad version. I’ll just assume it’s as good as the iPhone version. I consider Tweetbot for iPhone the best Twitter client of all time. Please, PLEASE Tapbots, bring this to Mac!
<a href="http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/">Tweetbot for iPhone →</a>
<a href="http://tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/ipad/">Tweetbot for iPad →</a>

Joey Valenti

Tweetbot

<blockquote>
The largest-ever Android malware campaign may have duped as many as 5 million users into downloading infected apps from Google’s Android Market, Symantec said today.
</blockquote>
emphasis mine
But in defense of Google, Symantec has been known to greatly exaggerate the state of malware on platforms before. To hear them tell it, OS X is practically crawling with malware. To date, there are something like 5 trojans on for the Mac — I don’t have the exact figures, lets be really generous and say it’s under 100, because it is — and no known viruses for OS X. None. And as of right now, the trojans available won’t even install on current versions of Snow Leopard or Lion. And even if you have an older, out of date system, you must provide and administrator password to install the trojans out there. Because of the way OS X is designed, malware would have a very hard time doing any actual damage without an administrator password. I will not say it is impossible, but it is unlikely.
And iOS has no known malware of any kind.

Open is better?

<img src="/assets/uploads/2011-11-10/IMG_0529.jpg" alt="IMG_0529">
Apple issued the first update to iOS 5 today, available as an “over the air” update (I assume it would also be available via iTunes, but who wants to do that anymore? I didn’t bother plugging in to iTunes to check). I’m given to understand that at some point my phone would have checked for the update automatically and let me know it was available, but I’m not the patient type so I went to Software Update as soon as I knew it was out and checked for the update.
It was pretty painless. In less than a minute after clicking “update” I was given this screen:
<img src="/assets/uploads/2011-11-10/IMG_0531.jpg" alt="IMG_0531">
It took about 3 minutes to install after that. My only complaint was that my phone did not reboot itself, but shut down after the update was finished. I waited on the black screen for about a minute before decided to try the power button. It immediately booted and Software Update showed that the update had been installed.
<img src="/assets/uploads/2011-11-10/IMG_0533.jpg" alt="IMG_0533">
This seemed to be a glitch that only affected my phone, because my wife’s 3GS did automatically reboot after the update when I updated it.
Over the air updates are definitely very nice (if long over due to iOS). No worrying about plugging the thing into iTunes, rummaging around trying to find a cable and all that jazz.

iOS 5.0.1 Over the Air update

<blockquote>
This certainly looks like a sign that Apple has won the battle over whether Flash belongs on mobile devices, as Adobe appears to be transitioning itself to an HTML5 future.
</blockquote>
This is the wrong perspective. Apple has not “won.” Apple saw the future. As usual, they saw where the puck was going to be and skated to that position.
I have no doubt that Apple would have included flash in iOS if it was viable for mobile platforms. But the fact is Flash has never been a particularly efficient technology. It used to serve its purpose. It was decent for desktop experiences at one time. But trying to shoehorn it onto the mobile platform where battery life and system resources are at a premium was always a bad idea. And Adobe has consistently proven that they are incapable of adapting Flash to mobile platforms.
And the bottom line here is that Apple has not “won” because we aren’t transitioning from Flash (a proprietary web publishing platform owned by Adobe) to some Apple proprietary technology. Flash is being superseded by web technologies that are much better, and that are more open and standards driven. This is a win for everyone.

Dieter Bohn on The Verge

Adobe to cease developing mobile Flash

The only iDevice I have which is compatible with iOS 5 is my 3GS, my wife’s 1st generation iPhone (formerly my iPhone) not being capable of running an OS newer than version 3. The 3GS is two years old now, but I still find it to be acceptable (though truthfully I’m looking forward to upgrading to a 4S as soon as I can pull together some green stuff).
iOS 5 runs acceptably well on the 3GS and as far as I know does not have any feature limitations that differentiate it from iOS 5 running on an iPhone 4 (neither the 3GS nor the 4 will have access to Siri, that will be a 4S only feature).
Notifications
My vote for best new feature is hands down the new notification system. I have lamented before the state of iOS notifications. Apple neglected this area of the OS for far too long and it was the one area where I genuinely felt Android had an edge on iOS. Admittedly Apple’s solution does look quite familiar. But if something has been done, and done well, why reinvent it. So we gained two major, MAJOR improvements.
<ol>
<li>Banner notifications</li>
</ol>
This is Instead of the disruptive modal pop-ups which required some action from the user, either close the notification, or open the offending app. The new banners, on the other hand, don’t get in the way (much), offer you a 5 second or so preview of the notification, then quietly dismiss themselves.
<ol>
<li>Notification Center</li>
</ol>
This is an area where notifications that haven’t been acted upon are kept. If you are busy playing Dead Runner, Brick 3D, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Monkey Ball, RAGE… well anyway, whatever you are doing, should you choose to ignore the notification, you can come back to it later by placing a finger at the top of your iPhone screen and pulling down. Notification Center drops down and shows you ignored notifications. You can clear them from here, or you can tap on one to go to the app from whence the notification came, which will also clear it (or, if you see a badge on an app from the home screen, and visit the app from there, the notification will be cleared).
Camera
Runner up for best feature is accessibility to the camera from the lock screen. I often found before that when I wanted to capture a moment with my camera, by the time I got the phone unlocked, got to the correct home screen, located the camera app and launched it, that I had missed my opportunity. In iOS 5, double clicking the home button causes a camera button to appear next to the “slide to unlock” area. Tap the camera button and you are ready for action. I suspect I’ll be using my iPhone camera a lot more now.
iMessage
I have several friends that updated to the Gold Master of iOS 5 early as I did. We have been enjoying iMessage. And, as advertised, it just works. When you go to text someone, iOS checks to see if the recipient has iOS 5 as well. If it does, the “send” button changes from green (SMS) to blue, and the text field says “iMessage” in it. This means it will not be sent via SMS using your carrier’s network, but will instead be sent via Apple’s free iMessage service. I sent more <del>texts</del> iMessages to these friends in a week, than I’ve ever sent in a month before.
So I’m loving iMessage. I only hope that Apple will also integrate it on the Mac, possibly with iChat.
Wi-Fi Sync
It’s pretty awesome to be able to sync my phone without the need to rummage around for my cable. And that’s pretty self explanatory so I shall move on.
iCloud
Yeah, iCloud probably deserves it’s own write up, but it’s also a big part of iOS 5. Unfortunately I don’t have much to say because I have only just this evening migrated my MobileMe account to iCloud. But in theory, it’s all the features from MobileMe I actually used, for free. And then adds documents in the cloud. So in theory I love it.
Week View
It’s a small thing, but orienting your iPhone to landscape while you are in calendar gives you a week view. This is a VERY good thing.
Stability
This is definitely the most stable any version of iOS has ever been at launch. If anything it feels more stable than iOS 4 was already. Things seem faster, animations seem less likely to lag, Safari seems faster, I haven’t had to restart my phone in days (something that seems necessary every other day with iOS 4 due to general lagginess after a couple days).
Gripes
My biggest gripe with iOS continues to be that I don’t think it’s nearly aggressive enough in it’s memory management. The user is not supposed to need to worry about closing apps or any such thing. In theory, if iOS needs memory, it closes apps starting with those that haven’t been used in the longest period of time. As I say, in theory, this is great because it means that the last couple apps you launched will be frozen in the background, in RAM, waiting for you to come back and use them. Since they haven’t actually closed, but were just frozen, they resume almost instantly when you reactivate them.
However, I have always found in iOS 4, that if I never manually closed applications, my phone would get almost unusable pretty quickly. Things get laggy, keyboard gets unresponsive, apps take a long time to reactivate, things crash. In short, it seems to me that iOS is just not closing applications in the background as readily as it should. I will sometimes see how long I can go without closing apps, and it doesn’t take long at all. So I usually stay in the habit of simply opening the app tray, and closing apps when I am sure I am done with them.
And I am sad to report this does not seem changed at all in iOS 5.
It’s kind of a small thing, but it’s irritating because Apple’s official line is, “don’t worry about closing apps, iOS will take care of it for you.” But it just doesn’t seem to work that way for me.
In Conclusion
But in closing, iOS 5 is a great upgrade and I’m quite happy with it. As far as I’m concerned, while iOS 4 was already better than Android in most ways, iOS 5 blows way past Android and takes a major lead.
Now, let’s get the rumor mill started on iOS 6! <img src="wink.gif" alt="wink">

iOS 5 (on a 3GS)

Yes, I know Apple announced 3 things this past Monday, OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud. But I’m going to concentrate on iOS 5 for the most part since it’s the most exciting to me, and only briefly mention Lion (and maybe iCloud).
And so here’s my brief comments about Lion. Yeah, I am excited about Lion (and to some extent iCloud in that it will be free and provide me with all the key features I’ve been paying for with MobileMe). Mission Control looks wonderful, and Spaces looks like it will actually be usable in Lion (I can’t stand spaces in Leopard/Snow Leopard). Full screen apps, if done right (and things are looking good in that regard) could be a great thing, as well as resume and autosave. Oh, and I might actually start using Mail.app again in Lion… I have been using a wonderful email client called <a href="http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/">Sparrow</a> of late, but we’ll have to see, Sparrow really is a wonderful email client.
And now on to the star of WWDC 2011 (as far as I’m concerned), iOS 5.
As usual, Apple <a href="http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html">has a good, and nice looking web page</a> detailing the new features demoed at WWDC. Well lets just say this looks to be as big an upgrade as iOS 4 was, and iOS 4 was a pretty big upgrade (I didn’t have AppleUserPro at that time and wrote my thoughts on my personal blog <a href="/blog/2010/04/07/what-apple-must-do-to-keep-me">before</a> the event, and <a href="/blog/2010/04/09/my-opinion-how-did-apple-do">after</a>).
So what’s there to be excited about in iOS 5?
1. Notifications One of the things I was disappointed we didn’t get in iOS 4 was better notifications (and I lamented such in the “after” article linked above). Indeed, I remember feeling even back when iOS 3 came out that Apple was quite late to the party of better notification management. Sure, Apple’s mode of operation often seems to be, not first to market, but best to market. Certainly, Cut/Copy/Paste is an example of this. But with Cut/Copy/Paste it didn’t feel like Apple had been dragging their feet. Apple brought it to us in what seemed a fairly timely fashion, not first, but certainly best. iOS was young and fresh and so much needed to be worked out that it all seemed reasonable.
But there notifications were, passed by in iOS 3 (née iPhone OS 3), and then again in iOS 4. And even among the Apple faithful there was quite a murmur. How could something this important, and seemingly simple enough to understand (for crying out loud just give us a place where these notifications are collected already) be passed over this long?
And so it is with both exasperation on the one hand (what on the wide, green earth took so long?), and absolute delight on the other hand that I watched (or rather read on the live blogs of the event) Scott Forstall unveil <a href="http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html#notification">Notification Center</a>. Definitely not first to market, and not even a new approach (cough Android cough), but definitely well done and well polished (as far as I can tell without having used it yet).
So goodbye and good riddance modal popups, and hello beautiful, easy to manage notifications.
Also, Notification Center has Widgets!
2. iMessage I must confess that while this looks to be quite awesome, one thing that seems to be missing (or perhaps just not yet unveiled) is an iMessage counterpart for OS X. Personally, I’d be happy to see it integrated into iChat. We shall see. It does look great.
3. Newsstand Yeah… maybe I’m missing something, but as far as I can tell, I couldn’t care less. I subscribe to RSS feeds (and lots of them) not newspapers and magazines. Yeah, I just don’t care.
4. Reminders This is another one of those, “What on earth Apple?” things. It has always been strange to me that iPhone syncs with iCal, either via cable, or via MobileMe, and iCal has ToDos while iPhone does not. ToDos in iCal are part of the calendar, are synced to MobileMe. So why were they not a part of iPhone? I finally spent money on a good ToDo app that syncs wirelessly with MobileMe via CalDav and will therefore sync with ToDos in iCal.
But, I am excited to have ToDos come natively to iOS, and about time!
And location based reminders with a geofence, absolutely brilliant (i.e. remind me to go by the store for my wife when I leave work).
4. Twitter Integration I’ll probably use it, but it’s not a super exciting feature to me.
5. Camera I have certainly found in the past that by the time I get my phone unlocked, get to the right home page and launch the camera app, the moment I was trying to capture is gone.
Therefore, being able to double click the home button, then tap the camera button to launch camera and snap a picture quickly without having to unlock the phone should be great for me.
Also, using Volume Up as a shutter button should be great, I should be able to hold it like a real camera. I didn’t think they would ever actually do it though. It’s kinda weird. Up to this point the simplicity of having one function assigned to a specific button has never been questioned. Volume button always changes volume… well, convention has been broken now. But I’m happy about it.
6. Photo Enhancements Meh
7. Safari First of all, Apple is bringing “Reading List” to Safari that syncs across all your devices that have Safari. This is great news to me. I’ve been using Marco Arment’s <a href="http://www.instapaper.com">Instapaper</a>. And I do like Instapaper on the one hand. But it doesn’t feel integrated very well. Reading list will be integrated and managed from right within Safari. So, much as I feel bad for Marco, I will probably switch.
Safari is also going to include tabbed browsing, but I have been unable to divine whether that will be true on iPhone as well, or just iPad. It makes sense on iPad, plenty of screen real-estate for it, and having to tap twice to switch pages when tabs let you click just once makes sense. I’m not sure I would like tabs on my small screen iPhone.
Also, the reader feature looks interesting, but I don’t know how much I’ll actually use it.
8. PC Free This is a natural progression. You no longer need to sync and activate with iTunes to start using iOS. Just enter your Apple ID and password and go. Doubtless most users will plug in to iTunes at some point. But as more and more stuff moves to iCloud it will become less and less necessary. This is a good move on Apple’s part.
Other There’s also a lot of other smaller enhancements, the biggest of which deserves a mention, which is Mail. We will now have rich text formatting (bold, italic, underline, indenting etc.), Flagging of messages, dragging of addresses from field to field.
Overall, iOS 5 will make me and most every other iOS user a very happy camper. While it has taken Apple a little while on some of these features (and there’s no excuse I can make for them on some of these things anymore), this really just propels iOS that much farther ahead of the competition. You see in my estimation iOS, despite it’s notification issues, and other flaws, has remained a superior mobile operating system. Now, with feature parity on all the major issues (that I can think of), it leaves the competition in the dust.

iOS 5

<blockquote>
A new rumor claims Apple will hold its annual iOS roadmap event in early April to show off iOS 5 as expected,
</blockquote>
That would pretty much be right on time, and I’ll be looking forward to see what Apple will unveil this time around. I’m fairly happy with my iPhone right now, happier than I’ve ever been. But I have my list of things I would like to see…
<blockquote>
but also states the company will also unveil an updated MobileMe service.
</blockquote>
This wouldn’t surprise me. There have been signs that Apple has something up it’s sleeve. And they certainly shifted to make a major focus on the Mobile aspects of the former dotmac service when they revamped into MobileMe. Therefore including another revamp announcement as part of an iOS event would seem to be logical to me.

Apple Insider: Apple rumored to unveil iOS 5, new MobileMe at media event in early April


An early April Apple event

That does seem like quite the security vulnerability! It defeats the point of the passcode lock. I personally don’t bother with a passcode lock, I figure if I lose my phone I’ll remotely wipe it. But I think Apple should patch this vulnerability right away!

YouTube: Andrew from the iPhone Blog


iOS Passcode Lock not so secure

All I can say is, it’s about time! I have hated the Marker Felt font in the notes app since the day I got my first iPhone. In fact for that, and other reasons (not the least of which are syncing and proper organization) I have completely abandoned the built in notes app anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. But hooray for a professional font choice in any event!

Posts tagged “iOS” from the blog