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The Target-the-Mac Edition Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Apple's Software Chief Details How iOS Apps Will Run On Macs, by Lauren Goode, Wired

At a high level, Federighi described what Apple is doing as bringing an iPhone software framework over to Mac and making it native to Mac, rather than using some type of simulator or emulator. Both iOS and macOS share a common kernel and have common sets of frameworks for things like graphics, audio, and layout display. But over time, each platform has evolved differently. The biggest and most well-known framework is UIKit, but that was built for iOS way back at the start and wasn't designed to address mouse and keyboard controls. With macOS Mojave, UIKit will be updated. Just like developers are currently able to target an iPhone or an Apple TV as the device where their app will run, they'll soon be able to target the Mac as well.

For app makers, some aspects of app porting will be automated and others will require extra coding. Using Xcode, Apple's app-making software that runs on Macs, a developer will be able to indicate they want to write a variant of their iOS app for macOS. Certain interaction UIs will happen automatically, like turning a long press on iOS into a two-finger click on a Mac. App makers may have to do some extra coding, though, around things like menus and sidebars in apps, such as making a Mac app sidebar translucent or making share buttons a part of the toolbar.

Greg Joswiak & AR Head Mike Rockwell Join John Gruber To Talk iOS 12, iOS Apps On macOS, More, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

"There’s no doubt this is eating our own dog food. And we do want to get the APIs right because if you change them later, things break. It’s a very long commitment and if we do it right, it’s a big deal for bringing software to the Mac."

"There’s a lot of iOS apps. Not all of them will be great Mac apps, but a lot of them will be great Mac apps. If we do our job right, it shouldn’t be a ton of work for that to happen. All of the development is done on the Mac to start with, so it’s an option staring developers in the face."

"At the end of the day, you’re getting a Mac app. They’re not iOS apps that are emulated on Mac. They are Mac apps."

With Mojave, Apple Makes Changes Inside And Outside Mac App Store, by Jason Snell, Six Colors

Apple is making it easier for more apps to get into the Mac App Store, while also instituting somewhat tighter security controls on apps that are released outside the store. Anyone who wants to see a slippery slope that ends up in the Mac software experience being entirely locked down will undoubtedly see it here; it’s more likely that this is Apple’s way of balancing the freedom of Mac software distribution with the need to protect Mac users from malware infestations.

[...]

Altering policies and providing new tools for apps to ask permission, thereby returning developers like Panic and Bare Bones to the store, is what it will take to refresh the Mac App Store. And it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening.

Beta Track

iPhone X Face ID Misfires Resolved With A Simple Swipe In iOS 12, by Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider

A failure to unlock an iPhone X running iOS 12 will display the number pad, along with a notification advising "Swipe up for Face ID or Enter Passcode." Users can then swipe up from the Home Bar at the bottom to retry Face ID, or continue entering their passcode as normal.

AirPods To Get Live Listen Feature In iOS 12, by Steven Aquino, TechCrunch

In iOS 12, users will be able to use Live Listen, a special feature previously reserved for hearing aids certified through Apple’s Made for iPhone hearing aid program, with their AirPods.

After enabling the feature in the iPhone’s settings, users will be able to use their phones effectively as a directional mic. This means you can have AirPods in at a noisy restaurant with your iPhone on the table, for example, and the voice of whomever is speaking will be routed to your AirPods.

Different Paths

iOS Apps On Macs? Gee, That Feels Familiar..., by JR Raphael, Computerworld

With Apple, you get a more closely controlled selection, which forces developers to comply more closely with guidelines and (in theory, at least) creates a more consistent experience. With Android, the less closely controlled gates mean more variance in the level of experience within — but that also means the door is open to more advanced and interesting types of creations that wouldn't make their way past Apple's gatekeepers.

I think most reasonable people would agree that Google could stand to gain some of Apple's quality control and ability to get developers to follow its lead, while Apple could stand to loosen things up at least a little and allow some different types of tools into its closely walled garden.

How Do Apple’s Screen Time And Google Digital Wellbeing Stack Up?, by Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge

Overall, one could probably say that Google is taking a bit more of a brute force approach with its Digital Wellbeing program, whereas Apple’s approach is a bit more tilted toward simply supplying information to the user so they can make better decisions themselves (if they choose). Both are beta pieces of software, so there’s a very real chance that Apple and Google may make huge changes to how these features work by the time they’re released in the fall.

Apple Siri Has Stopped Chasing Google And Amazon In War For Answers: Now The Focus Is All On You, by Todd Haselton, CNBC

Instead of Siri becoming "smarter" -- that is, answering more complicated questions and holding more natural conversations with humans -- it's starting to learn more about how we use our iPhones and live our lives, and then and making recommendations.

It's a very different approach from what Google and Amazon are doing with the Google Assistant and Alexa.

Develop

macOS Mojave Will Officially Be The Last Release To Support 32-bit Apps, by Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac

Apple didn’t elaborate on exactly what the compromises might be with 32-bit apps running on Mojave, but it confirmed that it would indeed remove support entirely starting with next year’s macOS release.

Notes

Tim Cook Reveals His Tech Habits: I Use My Phone Too Much, by Seth Fiegerman, CNN

Tim Cook told CNN's Laurie Segall, in an exclusive TV interview, that he had a wake-up call about his own tech habits after seeing data from a newly unveiled Apple (AAPL) tool that will provide detailed reports of how much time users spend on the iPhone and iPad.

"I've been using it and I have to tell you: I thought I was fairly disciplined about this. And I was wrong," Cook told Segall after Apple's annual developer conference Monday.

[...]

"When I began to get the data, I found I was spending a lot more time than I should," Cook told Segall, while declining to list which apps occupy the most of his time. "And the number of times I picked up the phone were too many."

Apple Launches Another Kind Of Bootcamp At WWDC, And It's A HIIT, by Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider

Before Tuesday's sessions started on day two of WWDC, Apple took over San Jose's City National Civic event venue across from the convention center and set it up for fitness guru Kayla Itsines, an author, trainer and co-founder of the SWEAT app, focused on helping women to reach their fitness goals via plyometric training using minimal space and equipment.

Bottom of the Page

Is there a 'correct' number of times one should picked up the phone?

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Thanks for reading.