Kicking off my collection of writing on WWDC 2018, I’m going to talk about Siri Shortcuts, and the Shortcuts app. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be one of my favourites from the whole event.

The announcement was received by most people as being “now we know what the Workflow team have been up to”, I’m not complaining, I also posted the same thing. It is probably the best way the Workflow acquisition could have gone, because now it’s completely tied into the OS. It may have a different name, but it will always be Workflow.

The features announced was really how the OS interacted with the shortcuts, and how Siri is more intelligent because of it. Not the voice Siri, but the computational Siri that can understand you, and suggest things.

It will, of course, require developers to open up about different user actions in their apps. Which will allow Siri to analyse their usage, suggest them later on, and also maybe for users to build with in the Shortcuts app.

There were some intriguing demos for the suggested actions, which is not something I really say, because usually they are based around unrealistic or ideal situations. But because Siri is in your phone? I’m not sure how to explain that, but it knows about you, what you’re like, and also the environment around you. Which is why it can suggest you turn on Do Not Disturb when you go to the cinema.

They also showed an example of a regularly occurring event, such as buying a coffee in the morning. Maybe not everyone buys a coffee from an app on their phone every day, but I use the Starbucks app every time I go. And that could easily be at least 3 times a week. So if it learned (or just used Maps) the location of Starbucks, recognised it was associated with that action, that would be very helpful! It’s certainly something I feel would be capable, and it’s not a usual Siri feature that’s nice to think about, but never use.

It does get more advance though, and that’s with the Shortcuts (Workflow) app. I conceptualise it by being similar to Scenes in HomeKit, where you could say a phrase such as “Good morning”, and then Siri can perform a bunch of tasks to set you up for the day. Maybe it sort of encompasses the automation of HomeKit?

I’ve already been playing around on the iOS 12 beta, and while I’ve already been suggested some actions, like enabling a alarm, messaging my girlfriend, and even adding a new to-do in Things, we don’t have the Shortcuts app yet. That will come in a later update via the App Store. So I will definitely have to write more about that in the future. But from the keynote, it looks like they’ve added the Apple-style to Workflow, which will definitely make it feel easier to use for general users.

One of my questions though, is how well suited is this to a general user? I will be very keen to see if it’s a widely adopted feature, and even if the Shortcuts app with custom actions might not be, I see the Siri suggestions being a bit hit.

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Read more of my coverage of WWDC here.

After watching the Keynote, I was thoroughly impressed. While there still isn’t a dark mode for iOS, I can imagine it coming soon. And there are a lot of cool things that were announced.

While watching the event, I took a note of the top 4 for each OS, excluding tvOS, because who cares?

So here they are:

iOS 12

• Siri Shortcuts
• Notifications
• Screen Time
• Memoji

watchOS 5

• Competitions
• Automatic Workout Detection
• Walkie Talkie
• Interactive Notifications

macOS Mojave

• Dark Mode
• Dynamic Desktop
• News
• Mac App Store

I plan on doing some writing about the new features, but in more of an opinionated way, rather than a simple informative guide. You’ll find these with the WWDC 18 tag.

Bloomberg:

The software maker has agreed to acquire GitHub, the code-repository company popular with many software developers, and could announce the deal as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.

I don’t like the sound of this.

With iOS 12’s imminent announcement, I thought I’d prepare myself for a new way of using my devices.

For months now, I’ve been trying to refine my use of my devices, apps, and services that I use. But I think a different approach is needed, and I hope that future OS updates will help me along the way.

The method I’ve been using for a while is quite a harsh one, where I disabled notifications, and everything associated with them, on nearly all applications. Along with getting rid of some apps/services that I don’t think provide any value.

But while I think this has been a step in the right direction, I don’t think it’s a particularly accurate way to achieve my goal of adapting my devices to my needs, and for it to provide me with the most value as possible.

That’s why I’ve now done a complete reversal and turned on all the notifications, and possible distractions on my iPhone. In the short term, I’m hoping this will let me find out where I don’t need to be spending my time and also see if there is any value to them. I mean, I know notifications can be valuable, but I want the right balance. And by turning them all off, I’m potentially missing out.

So tonight, I’ve already gone through a few apps to disable types of notifications, and in some cases, just deleted the app entirely. For example, I have an app for a restaurant I go to maybe once every two months, but they send at least one offer notification every single day.

What I’m majorly hoping for in the next iOS update, are pretty minor things. With the ability to group notifications having the highest priority. I can’t even bear thinking about the types of apps that would benefit from this, because it’s probably all of them. I also think there can be improvements made to the way notifications are visualised. Because even grouped, it’s still just a list.

Then there’s priority, not all bits of information are equally useful. And if they are, you might not need to know about it right now. Things like iMessages are more important than likes on an Instagram post, and work emails are certainly not relevant out of work hours, or maybe even a work location. So there’s a lot of work that can be done here, involving sorting, filtering, and queueing/snoozing.

If all of these issues are “resolved”, then I think the way devices are experience, and even used, will change quite a lot.

There’s also one more tool that would be able to help focus your device usage on a bigger scale, and that would be a way to monitor/visualise your usage, or habits, system-wide. Of course, you can kind of track this by using the battery analytics that tells you the time on screen for apps, but I want it better, and more in my face. Because more insight can only be better.

This is, of course, a long-term goal, and maybe more of a process. But I plan to write about my journey of focusing my usage of devices, and in general, refining my life to maximise value.

I have a few more ideas that I want to try soon, so you’ll find these here only blog as well.

• A working Xcode that doesn’t have SourceKit crashing every 15 minutes.
• Always on Apple Watch face.
• Declarative UI framework.
• Dark mode for iOS.
• Better Notification Center.
• Maybe some UI changes so that iOS isn’t exactly the same as always.
• Widgets on the home screen.

Tim Hardwick, writing for Mac Rumors:

Stationery Pad is a handy way to nix a step in your workflow if you regularly use document templates on your Mac. The long-standing Finder feature essentially tells a file’s parent application to open a copy of it by default, ensuring that the original file remains unedited.

Stationery Pad doesn’t get much attention these days, but it’s a neat alternative to repeatedly editing templates and using the “Save As…” command, which can lead to overwriting the original file if you’re not too careful.

I had no idea this existed. I will most certainly be making use of it in the future.

A short update regarding my earlier piece on Apple blocking Steam’s Steam Link app.

Turns out I was correct in that the type of app has nothing to do with the rejection. Which is why the appeal to Apple about there already being other remote-desktop style apps, didn’t work.

However, Reuters wrote a great piece, including quotes from Valve. The major point is this:

Steam, however, also offers purchases within games distributed through its platform and also takes a cut of those purchases. Apple’s App Store guidelines ban such a store-within-a-store unless the purchases flow the Apple’s infrastructure and pay Apple’s cut.

That is why it was rejected.

It’s also the reason why you have a Kindle app on iOS, but have to go to the Amazon website to purchase books. Because they don’t want to share any revenue with Apple.

It may seem terrible that Apple demand a cut of all purchases made on their platform. But they are the ones supplying the platform, and the opportunity for developers to build apps for them.

At first glance, Apple rejecting Valve’s Steam Link seems like a bad idea.

However, I haven’t yet seen anyone with details about why it was rejected. I’ve seen “business conflicts” mentioned, however I can’t pay too much importance to any of the reports until I see at least the guideline that it didn’t follow.

If it does indeed break an app review rule, then you can’t really argue that it was rejected. But if, like many articles pointed out, there are other remote-desktop style apps already in the app store, and Steam Link is essentially just that, then these should receive the same treatment.

To counter that point, there is also the fact that we do not know the reason why it was rejected. Which means the reason could be nothing to do with the fact that it’s a remote-desktop app.

Also, approving and rejecting is a bit of a dick move. But more likely caused by human error.

I recently started working on one of the most important parts of Slate, composing and publishing posts.

It was maybe the only feature I actually planned out, and I have a whole section in Things dedicated to it. I already know what features I want to add before I can say it’s complete, but I think I will also release a beta version for this feature, as soon as the minimal tasks are completed.

At the moment, it’s quite basic in functionality. It accepts an optional title, and of course the list content. No replies, image uploading, etc.

The first step was, of course, to add the code to actually post something to Micro.blog. But since then I’ve just been working on the UI.

Again, that is quite simple. There’s a field with for the title, a much larger text field which is where I’m currently writing this post content, and also a character count in the bottom-right corner.

Before releasing a beta version of composing, there are just a few things I want to add:

• Markdown highlighting.
• Easy way to insert Markdown syntax, such as links, or italics.
• Replying to a post.
• Replying to a user straight from their profile.

After I’ve done that, another build will be released!

👨🏻‍💻

This has to be some of the most incredible aerial footage I have ever seen. Truly breathtaking.

Peter Keith Aerial Cinematography Reel 2017/18 from Peter Keith on Vimeo.