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Explaining the Roles of the iMac Pro’s T2 Chip→

Jason Snell, writing for Macworld:

Before the iMac Pro was released, there was a lot of speculation that it was part of a trend toward creating a “hybrid Mac” that is driven by both an Intel processor and an Apple-designed ARM chip like those found in other Apple devices. The iMac Pro is definitely a hybrid of a sort, but probably not the one people were expecting. With the T2, Apple is using its chip-design prowess to take more control over parts of the Mac hardware that were previously outsourced to other controllers, and reaping the benefits of integrating them all together.

The iMac Pro isn’t running iOS apps, but it does get to take advantage of most of the work Apple has done to bolster the security of iOS devices and enhance the quality of photos and video taken by iPhone cameras. Apple will almost certainly continue to push this technology into more future Mac models, because it allows Apple to use the work it’s already done on iOS to improve the features and security of the Mac.

For years, the advancement of the Mac has been tied closely with the evolution of iOS. Many of the hallmark macOS features dating back to Lion originated on the iPhone and iPad, and came to the Mac – in part – to provide greater feature parity between the differing platforms.

While the iPhone’s influence on the Mac has previously played out primarily in the realm of software, that influence is clearly extending to hardware now. The 2016 MacBook Pro took the first step with its T1 chip powering the Touch Bar, but the T2 is another significant step forward. Though its benefits are largely invisible to the average user, Snell’s overview of the T2 and its extensive reach throughout the system makes clear that the Touch Bar was just the beginning of ARM-enhanced Macs.

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Connected, Episode 174 – 2017 In Review: I’ve Been Sitting on That Joke for Months→

We grade our predictions for 2017 before setting off on a trip down memory lane of the last twelve months of Apple news.

In the annual ‘year in review’ episode of Connected, we go through all the most important Apple and tech news from 2017 and discuss how they played out. This was a fun one to record. You can listen here.

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Pythonista 3.2 Syncs Scripts with iCloud, Supports Open-in-Place via iOS 11’s Files App→

For a long time, Apple’s App Store review guidelines prohibited apps from downloading executable code from the Internet. The company’s original stance resulted in IDEs that couldn’t sync scripts and programs across multiple devices – a serious limitation for the emergent movement of programmers embracing the iPad Pro as a portable workstation.

Fortunately, Apple started relaxing their rules earlier this year, allowing “apps designed to teach, develop, or test executable code” to download and run code. Pythonista, the popular Python IDE for iOS (and one of the best pro apps for iOS, period), has been updated this week with the ability to sync scripts with iCloud and edit external scripts in-place using Files’ document picker.

As someone who used Pythonista heavily for years and remembers previous rejections based on old App Store guidelines, this is fantastic news. I moved my existing script library to iCloud, which means all my code is now shared between the iPhone and iPad – no workarounds required. Pythonista now supports the iPhone X and drag and drop for importing scripts, but, even better, the app can open scripts and edit them in-place (saving changes back to the original location) just by opening them with the built-in Files picker. This feature makes it possible to, say, use Pythonista as an editor for script files stored in GitHub repositories and managed by Working Copy – all entirely on iOS, and natively integrated with Files.

Version 3.2 of Pythonista gets rid of the most annoying limitations imposed by the old Apple, another sign that the company’s approach to professional iOS software has changed over the years. While I don’t use Pythonista nearly as much as I did a few years ago (you can imagine why), I plan on playing around with Pythonista 3.2 over the next couple of weeks.

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iOS 11 X and iOS 11 Classic→

In his review of the iPhone X, John Gruber astutely points out that the device effectively runs a fork of iOS 11:

There were always two things and only two things on the front face of an iOS device — the touchscreen display and the home button. In fact, the iPhone X changes iOS in more fundamental ways than even the iPad did. In terms of the role between the display and the home button, the iPad really was — and remains today — “just a big iPhone”.

The iPhone X, however, creates a schism, akin to a reboot of the franchise.

Apple hasn’t called attention to this, but effectively there are two versions of iOS 11 — I’ll call them “iOS 11 X”, which runs only on iPhone X, and “iOS 11 Classic”, which runs on everything else.

The fundamental premise of iOS Classic is that a running app gets the entire display, and the home button is how you interact with the system to get out of the current app and into another. Before Touch ID, the home button was even labeled with a generic empty “app” icon, an iconographic touch of brilliance.

This is a great way to think about the evolution of iOS going forward. As I noted last month, the iPhone X will reshape the entire iOS ecosystem over the next few years. Consequently, it’ll also make it more challenging to review a new version of iOS, as we’ll have to account for deeply different variations of the same features.

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How Far Ahead of Apple Maps Is Google Maps?→

Another fantastic essay by Justin O’Beirne, this time focused on explaining one of Google Maps’ strongest advantages over Apple Maps: the ability to use data to create more data.

With “Areas of Interest”, Google has a feature that Apple doesn’t have. But it’s unclear if Apple could add this feature to its map in the near future.

The challenge for Apple is that AOIs aren’t collected—they’re created_. And Apple appears to be missing the ingredients to create AOIs at the same quality, coverage, and scale as Google.

This is a perfect example of Google’s institutional approach to data collection paying off in the long term, giving them a substantial lead over the competition. O’Beirne’s visual comparisons between Google Maps and Apple Maps are just brutal.

Yes, Apple Maps may be “prettier”, but when you’re going somewhere, or need to find a specific point of interest, I bet you don’t care about “pretty”. You just want your map to tell you where to go, or show you accurately where you’re meant to be. Google is objectively ahead here, and Apple Maps’ slow evolution is concerning. There’s an interesting parallel here between Apple Music and Apple Maps: both nicer iOS apps than Spotify and Google Maps, and both far behind in terms of intelligence of the service itself.

As I wrote earlier this year:

Speaking from personal experience, Google Maps has considerably improved in my area in the past year, while Apple Maps has remained essentially the same. Which isn’t to say that Apple Maps is bad – Google simply has an edge over local business information and they’re evolving at a faster pace than Apple. To me, Apple Maps looks and feels nicer; Google Maps seems smarter and it has modern features I’d like Apple to add.

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Twitter Now Supports Third-Party Apps for Two-Factor Authentication→

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/943542421698125824

Earlier today Twitter announced that you’ll now be able to use a third-party app (such as Google Authenticator, Authy, or 1Password) for two-factor authentication instead of SMS. The company has updated their support document with instructions on how to set it up here.

This is great news as Twitter was the last service with 2FA that only supported sending codes via SMS. Switching from text messages to 1Password (which I use for one-time codes) was easy: in Twitter for iPad, I went to Settings ⇾ Account ⇾ Security, and enabled the ‘Security app’ toggle. I then selected to use another app to generate my codes and opened 1Password on my iPhone, where I hit Edit on my Twitter login item and scrolled to the OTP section. Here, I tapped the QR button, scanned the QR code Twitter was displaying on my iPad with the iPhone’s camera, and that was it.

Unless you specifically want to receive 2FA codes from Twitter via SMS, you should consider switching to a dedicated authentication app: these codes work independently from carriers and location, and they can be generated offline.

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Connected, Episode 173: The Final Robin→

Round out 2017 with fake apps and an anti-wishlist.

In the final episode of Connected for 2017, we revisit the classic wish list with a twist: what are the things we’d like Apple to stop doing? You can listen here.

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Apple Addresses Reported iPhone Slowdowns After Software Updates→

There’s an age-old conspiracy theory that Apple intentionally slows down older iPhone models to compel upgrades to new ones. Every year around the time a new version of iOS releases – which also happens to be the time new iPhone models launch – users report that their old phones aren’t as speedy as before. While some of this felt downgrade is to be expected with new features introduced in major iOS versions, Apple today confirmed that there is in fact more to it than that – at least, in certain cases.

Earlier this week John Poole shared Geekbench results that seemed to indicate some level of throttling of iPhones after certain software updates. His charts showed that for an iPhone 6s, iOS 10.2.1 introduced a performance change, while for the iPhone 7, iOS 11.2 did the same. Seemingly in response to these tests, Apple has released a statement to Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch that aims to make sense of the inconsistencies.

“Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.”

Panzarino explains:

Basically, iPhones were hitting peaks of processor power that the battery was unable to power and the phones were shutting off. Apple then added power management to all iPhones at the time that would ‘smooth out’ those peaks by either capping the power available from the battery or by spreading power requests over several cycles.

While Apple’s lack of communication on this matter can certainly be viewed as a problem, ultimately the issue appears rooted in battery technology generally rather than in iPhones specifically. Lithium-ion batteries have certain limitations, which are exacerbated in certain conditions, and Apple made the decision to reduce peak performance in those conditions rather than leave users facing unexpected device shutdowns.

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