MyAppleMenu - Tue, Nov 24, 2015

Tue, Nov 24, 2015The Really-Thrilling Edition

Apple's ResearchKit Shows Promising Early Results, by Timothy Chen, Forbes

“These are very exciting numbers for us. When we prepared the IRB (Institutional Review Board) proposal, we thought we could recruit a couple hundred users. But in the end we got thousands of users. So that’s really thrilling,” Dr. Wang said.

The Golden Gigaflop: Apple’s Shrinking Performance Sweet Spot, by Pauli Olavi Ojala, Medium

By the mid-90s, a server computer equipped with multiple DEC Alpha CPUs could manage a gigaflop. A couple of years later in 1999, the Power Mac G4 finally brought Apple’s hardware into gigaflop territory.

But what has happened since? Turns out that the one-gigaflop computer isn’t a relic of history. Instead Apple has released several iterations of computers roughly in this same performance range, but with constantly shrinking physical volume.

Needs And Expectations

iPad Pro Review: No Country For Old Macs, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

If you are someone who loves your iPad and just wants more of it, this is the iPad for you. If you’re someone who dreams of one day having a device that’s got the screen of a Retina laptop but the portability of an iPad, stop dreaming.

As for most of us, the question is not whether we can do our jobs on the iPad Pro, but whether we want to. The answer depends more on what your needs and expectations are than on the iPad Pro itself.

Apple Pencil Review, by Myke Hurley, Pen Addict

The work Apple has done to get the hardware and software in harmony to the point where this all works so flawlessly is astounding to me. The results I am able to achieve are just fantastic.

Pay Forward

Square Rolls Out Readers To Accept Apple Pay, by Edward C. Baig, USA Today

Square is rolling out new mobile payment readers to 100 local businesses around the country, allowing such merchants to accept chip cards, and most notably, Apple Pay. The move is a big deal for Square, which only last week went public. But it also adds momentum to Apple’s efforts to spread Apple Pay more broadly.

Apple Pay To Launch In China By February, Sources Say, by Yang Jie and Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal

Apple Inc. plans to launch its new Apple Pay electronic-payment service in China by early February, according to people familiar with its discussions, potentially bringing it to a vibrant but fiercely competitive market for digital money.

The Cupertino, Calif., company has struck deals recently with China’s big four state-run banks, the people said. The deals will allow potential Apple Pay users to link the service with their local bank accounts.

Stuff

Official WordPress App For Mac OS X Released, by Oliver Hsalam, Redmond Pie

The app bears a striking resemblance to the WordPress.com website, though that should probably come as little surprise, and offers all of the same functionality. Those wishing to simply post new content to a WordPress.com website, a self-hosted WordPress blog or a WordPress VIP site can do just that using the new app. As for more complex things such as settings, comments, notifications and other day-to-day running of a blog, they can also get done here, but will require Jetpack plugin installed on self-hosted blogs in order to make use of those features.

Commander One Pro Review: A Free Finder Alternative For Power Users, by J.R. Bookwalter, Macworld

Commander One adds welcome utility the Finder could only dream of and manages to handle most core tasks quite well, but could use further UI refinement and a few bug fixes, particularly with the built-in FTP Manager in the Pro version.

Skype For iOS Updated With Data Detectors For Phone Numbers, Addresses, And More, by Mike Beasley, 9to5Mac

Now whenever someone sends you a phone number, address, or date, you can tap that information to automatically start a call, bring up a map, or create a new calendar event, respectively.

Make Your Own Music Sound Louder And Prouder With Landr’s New Mac App, by Martin Bryant, The Next Web

Develop

On Ad Supported Websites From A Developer’s Perspective, by Leonard Bogdonoff, Medium

Notes

Apple TV Ad Campaign Continues As Colorful Billboards Go Up Nationwide, by Mike Beasley, 9to5Mac

New Visa Ad Campaign For Apple Pay Starts Today In The UK With ‘Anticipation’ Theme, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

Taiwan Tech Demise Shows Pain Of Dependence On Desktop PCs, by Tim Culpan, Bloomberg

Taiwan’s technology companies mostly remain mired in PC hardware, while those in other countries such as China have moved into Internet services, birthing juggernauts such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

iXcode

Do I want Xcode on an iPad? Sure I do.

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Okay, I've given some thought to this Xcode-on-iPad thing, and I have a different opinion now.

See, the programming languages that many of us dabble with, be it Swift or Objective C, PHP or Perl, are mostly heavily text-based. Sure, a keyboard to type words and paranthesis and semi-colons is not foreign in the iPad world. But, if one is to fully embrace the iOS world, there should be a re-think of what is programming, in my humble opinion.

The Interface-Builder portion of Xcode is a good start. However, it seems to me except for the addition of the confusing-to-me auto-layout stuff, it didn't really attracted too much attention from Apple in recent years. Perhaps Apple is secretly working on something to replace the Interface-Builder, just like how it was secretly working on Swift for quite a while. I know I do want to see something extra-ordinary coming from Apple to tackle the Xcode-on-iPad problem.

(Someday, I shall read up more about Hypercard, something I've not used before.)

The Mac started out needing Lisa for creating Mac apps. I hope the Mac doesn't just hang around in Cupertino just because Xcode-on-Mac is needed to create iOS apps.

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Thanks for reading.