Linked List: June 10, 2014

Tuesday, 10 June 2014

Scott Hurff on the Improvements to Messages in iOS 8 

Scott Hurff:

To me, this is the marquee improvement of iMessage, and the attention to detail blows me away. Not only is Apple making liberal use of new gestures here, it’s also embracing the radial menu effect while creating a new native iOS design pattern. Whoa.

Those radial menus are pretty cool (and seem designed for one-handed use). I also really like the new recent photo picker when you just tap the Camera button.

A Tale of Two Apples 

Jason Snell:

Criticism of post-Jobs Apple tends to run in one of two directions (unless you’re the author of Haunted Empire and want to have it both ways): Either Apple is doomed because it’s slavishly following the out-of-date playbook of its former CEO, or it’s doomed because it’s not following the playbook of its genius former CEO.

As a close observer of Apple before, during, and after Jobs’s tenure, I can tell you that the Apple of today is not playing by the Steve Jobs playbook — except for the bit that demanded that everyone stop asking what Steve would do. Tim Cook and his lieutenants are immersed in the Apple culture created by Steve Jobs, of course, but they’re applying that culture to an ever-changing world — rather than going to the 2011 playbook.

Astute piece, all the more remarkable given that Snell wrote it before WWDC.

Red Sweater T-Shirts 

Now available at Buy Olympia:

Susie Ghahremani has illustrated an adorable bear wearing a charming red sweater for Red Sweater Software.

This bear has opted to not wear his mittens and socks for now, but they are there, just in case.

Jalkut was wearing one of these last week at WWDC, and it’s pretty sweet. Just ordered mine.

Matt Drance on WWDC 2014 and Apple 

Matt Drance:

That process began some time before October 5, 2011. It ended on June 2, 2014. Josh Topolsky kind of said it, Ben Thompson kind of said it, so let’s just say it:

This wouldn’t have happened under Steve Jobs.

The “Continuity” suite of features says more to me than anything else announced last week, naturally blurring the line between Mac and iPhone and iPad while still accepting each product for what it is. Recent updates to OS X seemed intent on forcing iOS down the Mac’s throat. Last week, for what felt like the first time ever, the two were on equal footing: an Apple device is an Apple device is an Apple device. This shot of creativity, connectivity, integration, and inclusion points to drastic change from within. When I wrote “Regime Change” in 2012, nearly everyone assumed the title referred to the fall of Scott Forstall. It in fact referred to the rise of Tim Cook.

Complete agreement.

Google Demotes Chrome Feature That Would Hide Full Web Addresses 

Stephen Shankland, writing for CNet:

Google apparently has taken one step back from its “origin chip” plan that would hide the full addresses for Web sites that people visit with its Chrome browser.

On Tuesday, Chrome team member Peter Kasting demoted one aspect of the address-hiding feature from a top priority to a third-level priority. “The origin chip work is backburnered,” he said in his explanation on Google’s issue-tracking site.

The new Safari on OS X Yosemite does pretty much the same thing. I wonder if Apple is going to stick with it. I have mixed feelings about it — I think it’s probably better for most users to just show the domain name, but I’d like an option to restore the old behavior.

Google Buys Skynet 

Google:

Google Inc. announced today that it has entered into an agreement to buy Skybox Imaging for $500 million in cash, subject to adjustments.

Skybox’s satellites will help keep Google Maps accurate with up-to-date imagery. Over time, we also hope that Skybox’s team and technology will be able to help improve Internet access and disaster relief — areas Google has long been interested in.

I’m sorry, Skybox, not Skynet. My bad.

Apple’s Cement Conference 

Horace Dediu:

So this was the way I saw WWDC 2014. A cement conference cheered by cement enthusiasts but leaving Architectural Digest writers asking what the fuss was all about.

Swift’s Ascendance 

Paul Krill, writing for InfoWorld:

Both the Tiobe and PyPL indexes already have plans to accommodate Swift. “A preview shows that its first rating will probably in the top 20 by [the July Tiobe index]. Swift is a natural and long-awaited next step of Apple,” this month’s Tiobe index description said. The monthly index, which gauges language popularity via a formula assessing searches on languages on sites like Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube, has shown Swift’s predecessor, the Objective-C language, ranking not far behind C and Java in language popularity in recent years.

If you went back in time to 2004 and told people that Objective-C would rank “not far behind C and Java in language popularity” in 2014, I don’t know that you’d find anyone who would believe you, even within Apple. iOS has proven to be almost unfathomably popular.

But the thing is, Objective-C’s popularity has nothing to do with Objective-C as a language, in and of itself. If anything, the nature of Objective-C has almost certainly hampered its popularity. It’s all about Apple’s platforms and frameworks, for which, until last week, Objective-C was the one true language. Now that Swift is here, and is a first-class peer to Objective-C for all of Apple’s frameworks and platforms, I think Swift will rise in popularity with amazing speed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Swift ahead of Objective-C on these indexes by this time next year.

‘Do Your Work, Your Best Work’ 

Seth Godin:

If you try to delight the undelightable, you’ve made yourself miserable for no reason.