Dan Counsell, founder of Realmac Software has written about his wishes for the Mac App Store. He talks about the issues developers currently face, and also some tips on what can be done to fix them.

The Mac App Store may seem like the best option for indie developers, but it’s not. I remember when Apple first announced the Mac App Store (MAS). It sounded like a pretty good idea to give Mac developers the same kind of centralized marketplace to sell their software that made the iOS App Store so popular. Apple said then and still proclaims that MAS is dedicated to helping devs “make great apps” but most developers (myself included) will tell you that it’s never lived up to it’s potential and is now going off the rails.

I released my app Qwiki on the Mac App Store, mainly because I don’t want to manage the admin, sales, and other boring tasks that come with managing it yourself.

But although I don’t have experience selling pro apps, there are a ton of restrictions that stop them from selling directly on the MAS. Some restrictions are good for your security, but they can get out of hand, and it’s led to big name apps being removed from the store.

I’m also hoping for some improvements, especially as Phil Schiller is now in charge of it.

This article comes from my newsletter, which I have stopped after just 3 issues. It was just an idea that didn’t work out for me personally, as it required a more focussed piece every week. And I realised I prefer the shorter and quicker form of writing, that I do here on Radical Thinker.

So here is the last issue, which is about personalising your devices.

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I’m sure you’ll understand that a house is not always a home, as you have to do some level of customisation to make sure it fits with your desires and needs. You add a sense of personality to transform it into a home.

Well I believe that you can apply the same idea into technology, and the devices you use everyday, because they are your “virtual home”.

So why shouldn’t it be comfortable?

The first place everyone starts off with is the wallpaper, it’s a pretty big part of a device, especially when it’s the lock screen and the home screen. But this isn’t true personality, as you’ve still got the same device as everyone else.

The little things that make a difference are cool cases, different coloured covers, putting stickers on your devices, and then there’s even the way you set up and layout your devices.

I’m a big sticker fan myself, and you can see below what it looks like:

It’s not much, but the stickers are things that I like, and it feels mine when I’m holding it. I find it really interesting to see what other people do to their devices as well, I’ve seen some cool creations in the past.

So for the software side of things, using iOS as an example, your app layout and selection of apps can really change the feel of a device as well. I’ve previously been a person who likes to keep things standard, that’s fine I guess, but it’s not fun.

Don’t be afraid to move SnapChat into your Dock, delete Mail from your iPhone, or even set cat noises as your ringtone.

I think if you have a laptop, tablet, and sometimes even a phone, don’t hesitate to personalise it. It is yours after all.

I’d love to hear other peoples thoughts on this, and also see any of your customised devices!

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P.S. Just because I don’t write for the newsletter, it doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing these types of articles. I’ll just post them here instead!

Phil Schiller, the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Apple, has sat down with The Independent to talk about the latest MacBook Pro:

We first talked in an Apple-white private room at Infinite Loop, the company’s Californian headquarters, minutes after the new laptops had been unveiled and followed up a few days later…

The questions range from why the SD card slot has been omitted, the evolution of the Touch Bar, why Siri is only just coming to the Mac, and more. It’s a pretty interesting interview, and I always like these things that usually come after big announcements, because you get a small sense of what they are thinking inside Apple, and their motivations.

Here’s one bit that I didn’t expect:

And we are proud to tell you that so far our online store has had more orders for the new MacBook Pro than any other pro notebook before. So there certainly are a lot of people as excited as we are about it. – Phil Schiller

You can read the whole interview over at The Independent.

National Geographic have just released a documentary called "Before the Flood", in which Leonardo DiCaprio explores the world in regards to the effect of climate change, and what we can do to prevent even more harm to our planet.

Before the Flood, directed by Fisher Stevens, captures a three-year personal journey alongside Academy Award-winning actor and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio as he interviews individuals from every facet of society in both developing and developed nations who provide unique, impassioned and pragmatic views on what must be done today and in the future to prevent catastrophic disruption of life on our planet.

It’s an incredible film, and while I was aware of most of climate change, it still opened my eyes up to a lot more harm we are doing. There’s also some people that are actively trying to turn it around, but they alone won’t be able to fix the planet, everyone needs to make themselves aware. Then the process of fixing things, won’t be as difficult.

You can watch the video on YouTube, or below if the embed works on your device. And after that, you can watch more videos on the National Geographic YouTube channel, and everything else they do on their website.

Also, Leo’s speech at the end! Wow.

Jeremy Burge has all the news regarding the new Emoji in iOS 10.2:

iOS 10.2 developer beta adds full Unicode 9 emoji support which includes all of the following 72 emojis approved in June 2016 – Emojipedia

There’s tons of new additions, including new professions, a shrug, face palm, realistic fruit, Harambe (or just a Gorilla), loads!

Apple certainly know how to make iOS updates sound appealing.

We all know Apple want to push wireless as the new way to enjoy audio, and I’m a big fan of it too.

But according to MacRumors, their upcoming AirPods may even be delayed until January 2017:

Following the confirmation that Apple has delayed its wireless "AirPods" beyond the original late October launch window, foreign supply chain sources are now pointing towards a launch date in January 2017, and not the late 2016 estimation that many believed would help the Bluetooth device sell during the holidays. – MacRumors

This is pretty rubbish news. In the ideal situation, I’m sure Apple would of loved to of released the AirPods along with the iPhone 7.

It’s been 5 days since Apple’s “Hello Again” event, and it’s time for me to put together what I thought of the whole thing.

I’ll make it easy by structuring it in a chronological order as the event panned out.

Accessibility

Apple once again opened the event with a short video on accessibility, it showcased their efforts to make all of their products usable by everyone. I really appreciate all they do with things like this, and luckily I’m fortunate not to need them.

iPhone Photography

Tim showed us some more photos, and this time they’re from the iPhone 7. I haven’t had my 7 Plus for very long, but the quality is astounding. And the new Portrait mode really makes photos stand out.

Apple TV

Yeah yeah, there’s thousands of apps for the TV. Nothing spectacular in my opinion.

Twitter

The idea of a live stream from Twitter while you watch a sports game may sound interesting, but it doesn’t do anything for me. Maybe it’s because I watch (real) football, and a Premier League game would attract quite a vibrant array of tweets. Also, I watch football to watch the actual football, I don’t really care what other people think about it until after the game.

TV App

We then got a first glimpse of the TV app for tvOS, and I think this is what the tv interface should of been from the start. But we all know Apple have had issues getting content providers on-board. Seeing as it strangely matches the icon on the Remote, I think they’ve been planning this from the beginning.

I like the interface though, and the idea of having your content in one place interests me, as I’m the sort of person that uses loads of different apps, but each for a small amount of content. It doesn’t have the support from Netflix or YouTube though, which will definitely affect people’s opinions. I still think it should be what you see first when you turn your Apple TV on, and then you can back up out of it to see the entire collection of installed apps.

It’s also coming to iOS as well, which is pretty neat.

Oh yeah, and why is there a black background to the icon? That’s pretty ugly.

MacBook Pro

Wow, this is awesome.

 

Now to the main part of the event, the MacBook Pro.

I think it’s the perfect mix between the MacBook Adorable, and the previous MacBook Pro. It finally comes in at least one other colour, Space Grey, and for the 13″ version, it’s 17% thinner, 23% less volume, and it weighs just 3 pounds! They may be boring stat’s for most people, but it means this laptop is more portable than ever.

The trackpad also received an update, and is now two times bigger! It sounds perfect for Pencil support, but I don’t see that coming any time soon.

Then there is the keyboard, it’s also something which has been adapted from the 12″ Adorable. It’s now the 2nd-generation, featuring new butterfly mechanisms, and slightly more travel than before. So compared to the old MacBook Pro, they’re still flat, but at least they’re supposed to be better.

Touch Bar

This is the real update to the MacBook pro, the OLED touch panel that sits just above the keyboard, instead of the previous function keys.

I think it sits perfectly in Apple’s opinion on bringing touch to the Mac, as the Touch Bar looks like an extension to the activities your fingers are already doing when typing. I agree that laptops just aren’t the right form factor for touch enabled screens.

I like the TouchID support, but it doesn’t really appeal to me as a major feature. Sure it’s way more secure than a password, and it’s quick, but I can type my password pretty quick on a Mac anyway.

One thing I do like about the Touch Bar, is the quick Emoji selection! I use Emoji loads, and it’s just a pain on macOS at the minute. But this will certain make my tweets more beautiful.

They’ve opened it up to third-party developers which is great, but one small thing I also like is that it’s for active apps only, so something can’t force it’s way in.

It’s a good extension to the keyboard, and in the words of The Great Cue – I can’t wait to do it.

Apple Pay

This is useful, and certainly a welcome addition. Probably the only reason why I slightly appreciate the TouchID sensor.

Display

Something else I’m looking forward to seeing with my own eyes, the new display. It’s 67% brighter, 67% higher contrast ration (not sure what this is exactly), and 25% more colours, because of the wide colour support.

Insides

There’s not much to say here, but I’m glad it’s faster. It could of been a load faster, but from what I gather, it’s down to Intel.

They all feature SSD’s, which is a huge step forward. Maybe we can see the price of these come down soon? 2TB SSD in a laptop sure sounds pretty good, but have you seen the price?!

Speakers

The speakers have now moved to either side of the keyboard, and supposedly they have a much higher dynamic range, so even more bass, and louder volume!

I/O

All the ports you want, just disguised by Thunderbolt. With the MacBook Pro feauring 4 x Thunderbolt ports, and still the same uncourageous headphone port.

It’s definitely forward thinking, and eventually everything and everyone will adopt USB C as the new standard. But it will cause some adoption issues first off. Apple have certainly adopted it in their own way though, with the port actually being a much more powerful Thunderbolt port. Which actually uses the same design as the USB C connector, and can also support it.

It means that you can use it for data transfer, connecting to external displays, and even to power your Mac from any of the ports!

MacBook (Not So) Pro

There’s also a slightly less Pro model available, and is aimed at MacBook Air users. It’s pretty much identical to the real Pro, except it just has the 2 Thunderbolt ports, and doesn’t feature the Touch Bar.

I’m not interested in this really, and I’m actually confused why they still call it the Pro.

TidBits

No Cinema Display?

With the announcement of the LG 5K display, there’s certainly a reason to think Apple are no longer in the display business.

No Desktop Upgrades

Does this mean they don’t think the Desktop has a future, or that they are still working on future improvements? I hope it’s the latter.

Magsafe is Dieing

One thing I’m actually unhappy about, but maybe the problem it solved just doesn’t exist anymore. With the super huge battery life of MacBooks, is there a cable issue? I’m pretty sure they could of adopted it somehow into the Thunderbolt port.

Startup Chime

The startup chime is gone, and I’m glad! Some users may feel attached to this noise, probably the same way I feel about MagSafe. But the only time I ever noticed this noice, was when I was booting up my Mac in a quite lecture room, which was quite annoying.

Final Thoughts

For myself, it was a really cool event, and I loved what they announced. But because the lack of iMac, Mac Pro, and even Mac Mini updates, I can totally see why some people were not very pleased.

I actually loved the new MacBook Pro so much, I ordered one straight away. It wasn’t a spur of the moment purchase though, as I’ve been planning to upgrade my current 2011 MBP for a while, and you’ve probably seen my sticker collection – which will be getting used straight away!

Here’s what I ordered:

13″ MacBook Pro

• Space Grey
• 3.1GHz Dual Core i5
• 8GB RAM
• 256GB SSD

USB C to USB Adapter

I knew this would be necessary!

Links

• Apple Event
• MacBook Pro
• tvOS
• Accessibility
• Apple – Youtube

Apple just held a Special Event to announce their latest MacBook Pros, and also a new app for the Apple TV. While I put some thoughts together of my own, I thought I’d share a few other peoples opinions:

Articles

• MacStories – Complete Overview of the new MacBook Pro by Alex Guyot
• MacStories – New MacBook Pro Touch Bar, T1 Chip Run on a Variant of watchOS by Federico Viticci
• MacRumors – Apple’s Phil Schiller: ‘We Don’t Design for Price, We Design for the Experience’ by Juli Clover
• MacRumors – New MacBook Pro Has Better Keyboard Than 12-Inch MacBook, But It’s Expensive and Lacking Ports by Joe Rossignol
• Six Colors – Perpendicular philosophy by Jason Snell
• MacSparky – Random Thoughts on Apples "Hello Again" Event – David Sparks
• 512 Pixels – The Mac Line is Still Kinda Broken by Stephen Hackett

Videos

• Marques Brownlee – Macbook Pro chat with Apple’s Craig Federighi!
• The Verge – New Apple MacBook Pro first look
• iMore – MacBook Pro 2016 First Look [w/ Touch Bar!]

Podcasts

• Connected: #114 – Two and Half Macs
• Mac Power Users: #347: New MacBooks!

Apple

• MacBook Pro Reveal Video
• tvOS
• MacBook Pro
• Special Event – October 2016

Youtube user waxonaxon has created quite an interesting time-lapse, it’s 20 years of Apple.com.

You can watch the video on YouTube, or directly below:

The one thing that intrigued me, was the whole process of simplifying the design, and comparing the 1996 site to the current version.

A few things happened recently, so I thought I’d put a small update here.

What I’m Doing Now

After seeing Matt Gemmel’s Now page, and reading more about the /now page movement, I created one of my own.

I will update this regularly with what I’m currently doing, so that I don’t need to repeat myself, or even forget anything!

Stickers

I ordered a test batch of stickers from Sticker Mule a while ago, and they just arrived. I think they look pretty good!

Hopefully in the future I can give them out, sell them, or just stick them everywhere myself?

T-Shirts

Something else I’ve always wanted to do for my blog, create a logo tee. My problem with things like TeeSpring and Cotton Bureau, is that they don’t ship until a set amount has been ordered.

Luckily I found TeeMill, who will let you purchase designs straight away!

So I’ve made a basic white tee with the Radical Thinker logo, that is available now!