MyAppleMenu

The Accurate-Numbers Edition Saturday, January 20, 2018

Dictation Eases Data Entry, by Adam C. Engst, TidBITS

In fact, I’d suggest that dictating numbers into iOS might be the most accurate way of entering them manually. It’s easy to make mistakes when transferring your gaze back and forth between a sheet of paper and the keyboard, and it’s also easy to tap a wrong key accidentally. But when you’re dictating, you can devote all your attention to reading and speaking the numbers, eliminating both context-switching and typing mistakes.

Tim Cook: 'I Don't Want My Nephew On A Social Network', by Samuel Gibbs, The Guardian

“I don’t believe in overuse [of technology]. I’m not a person that says we’ve achieved success if you’re using it all the time,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to that at all.”

Even in computer-aided courses, such as graphic design, technology should not dominate, he said.

“There are are still concepts that you want to talk about and understand. In a course on literature, do I think you should use technology a lot? Probably not.”

Tim Cook Talks iPhone Batteries, by Michael Tsai

If you didn’t somehow figure out that Apple had amended the release notes and decode that “power management” means they’re slowing down your phone, you weren’t “paying attention.” That’s the message from Apple’s CEO?

The New New Campus

Denver Not Biting On Apple’s Proposed Second Campus, by Tamara Chuang, Denver Post

“The project is really for a technical support center, and while we have existing Apple locations, we’re not confident that the wages of a technical support center would support wage growth opportunities in Colorado,” said Sam Bailey, vice president of economic development for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. “They are looking in lower-cost markets.”

Texas Misses Out On Apple's New Corporate Campus, by Melissa Repko, Dallas Morning Star

Apple may have cut Texas and California from the list because the company already has a large presence. Apple's headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. Austin is home to Apple's second largest campus. Apple has about 8,000 employees across Texas, including approximately 6,000 who work in Austin.

Stuff

Apple Receives FCC Approval For HomePod, Suggesting A Launch Could Come Soon, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Ahead of the promised "early 2018" launch of the HomePod, Apple has received official FCC approval for the smart speaker. Now that FCC approval has been obtained, Apple is free to begin selling the device at any time.

iMac Pro Review: Mac Pro Power In The Shape Of An iMac, by Jason Snell, Macworld

What it is, today, is the fastest Mac around, with fast processors, storage, and connectivity, all attached to that gorgeous 5K screen. If you aren’t sure if you need an iMac Pro, you probably don’t. But for those of us who can put the 8, 10, 14, or 18 cores in iMac Pro to work, along with the Radeon Pro Vega GPU and the fast SSD storage, it’s an amazing combination of Mac Pro and 5K iMac.

This App Filled The Void Google Reader Left In My Heart, by Hayden Manders, Nylon

There are other apps that do the same thing—putting the articles you want to read in one place—but Pocket has innocuous details that truly make it feel like, well, a personal pocket. For one, the desktop extension has made saving stories to my Pocket as easy as one click: install the extension, stumble across an article, click the button, and boom! Open the app on your mobile device, and it’s there. It’s Pocket’s mobility that truly makes internet’ing so thrilling.

This Chatroom Only Opens When Your Phone’s About To Die, by Samantha Cole, Motherboard

I just tried to kill my phone battery on purpose so I could talk to a bunch of strangers for a few moments. I took a call in the cold, turned my screen brightness up to max power, connected my Bluetooth headphones and let YouTube play at 1080p HD.

All of this felt cruel, but it was necessary if I were to meet my new friends in the void below five percent. Die With Me, an app launched Wednesday on iOS and Android, is a chatroom that’s only accessible during those dark moments where your phone’s about to kick it.

Develop

What Happens To The Traffic You Send To The App Store?, by iA

The good news is: Blogging pays off. The traffic you create on your side does translate into higher sales. But if it results in sudden spikes you get punished. Most probably the anti-spam algorithm kicks in assuming that you want to game the rankings and ranks you down. In consequence, you do not get proportionally more sales, when at the same time you fall in the rankings. A sudden spike in traffic and sales gets punished, no matter whether its real or fake traffic. There is not much we can do about that but whine. Or is there?

How To Design Non-Addictive UX (It’s Really Not Hard), by Bruce Nussbaum, Fast Company

If you deconstruct what “great UX” actually translates into, you often get an addictive digital site where consumers are manipulated to feel compelled to visit again and again. It is a space where you are captured, examined via your data, and targeted by advertisers selling you stuff. Las Vegas gambling casinos have long been known to be designed for addiction. Kids aren’t allowed at slot machines. They are, however, permitted to get in front of any screen that comes their way, and they are pulled into what companies love to think of as a “great consumer experience”–as we all are.

Hence the need for a new Detox Design. We need to use all the practices of UX to help get us off our addiction to devices. Here are a few suggestions for how to do Detox Design.

Bottom of the Page

I wonder if the designers in Apple ever have desires to design not just an office park, but an entire city? Or did they take a look at Celebration and immediately backoff from that idea?

~

Thanks for reading.