Posts in Linked

Tim Cook and Siri in Cerebral Palsy Foundation Video→

Nice video featuring Tim Cook and Siri for a very important initiative:

It’s a joy to have Tim Cook add his voice (and Siri’s) to our campaign. Tim’s combination of keen mind and kind heart is displayed every time that he communicates his vision to the world. We’re thrilled that his outreach now includes the “Just Say Hi” campaign.

Here’s Steven Aquino:

As someone with cerebral palsy, this is a topic close to my heart. I get many stares and questions about my disabilities, and “Just Say Hi” sends a great, simple message for how to best handle these questions.

Bravo to Apple for yet again raising awareness of and advocating for the accessibility community.

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Apple’s Updated Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader Supports iPhone, USB 3 Speeds on iPad Pro→

As first noticed by iDownloadBlog, Apple quietly updated its Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader alongside the release of the iPhone Smart Battery Case adding support for iPhone (previously, the accessory was limited to iPad users) and faster USB 3 transfers via the iPad Pro’s Lightning connector.

Apple writes:

The Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader supports standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW, along with SD and HD video formats, including H.264 and MPEG-4. It supports data transfer at up to USB 3 speeds on iPad Pro, and up to USB 2 speeds on all other iPad and iPhone models.

Apple previously confirmed that the iPad Pro would support USB 3 transfer speeds, and the updated SD card reader appears to be the first product to take advantage of it. Last week, John Gruber speculated that the different Lightning port of the iPad Pro could also open up to USB-C functionalities in the future; I’m curious to see which other accessories will implement these iPad Pro optimizations in the next year.

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iSkelter’s Canvas Smart Desk for iPad Pro→

Neat idea by iSkelter, via Yanko Design:

The Canvas Smart Desk for the iPad Pro and the Surface Pro revolves around the word “Pro”. Designed to make any flat space (or even your lap!) an instant and effective workstation, the smart desk allows you to dock your tablet, a smartphone, and even a paired stylus (The Microsoft Pen or the Apple Pencil).

The Canvas comes in two variants. The Canvas Creator is a more compact desk meant for the serious and swift professional. The Canvas Pro is a larger variant, offering a little extra space for your notepad/coffee/portable-speaker.

While I tend to either hold my iPad or prop it up with the Smart Cover, the Canvas surface looks nice for a combined iPhone + iPad + Pencil setup. It costs $68 for the Creator and $100 for the Pro version from iSkelter’s website.

Also “interesting”: they’re using my iPad Home screen in their product shots.

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An Illustrator’s Review of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil→

Writing at Fantastic Maps, Jonathan Roberts has published his review of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil from an illustrator’s point of view:

But the real clincher? It’s faster to illustrate on the iPad Pro, with Pencil, using Procreate, than it is to illustrate on a 16Gb Macbook Pro, with a Wacom Intuous, in Photoshop. That’s astonishing – and places this as a core piece of my professional illustration workflow. It does not replace my laptop – as mentioned, there’s a on of key pieces that the software and hardware can’t do. But I’ll now create maps first on the iPad Pro if I can, and then do the final polish on my laptop. I never expected that to be the case when I picked this up.

A very balanced and honest take on the merits of the iPad Pro, as well as its limitations compared to desktop hardware and software. Apple should listen to people like Jonathan for the future of the platform.

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Facebook Shuts Down Creative Labs→

In more shutdown news today, Facebook has also announced they’re closing Creative Labs, their internal initiative aimed at shipping separate, more creative apps. Ian Sherr, writing at CNET:

As of Monday, Slingshot, Rooms and Riff, an app that allowed users to create and share short videos based on a theme, have been pulled from app stores. The Menlo Park, California-based company has also removed the Web page for Creative Labs.

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the apps had disappeared, noting they hadn’t been updated in some time.

“Since their launches, we’ve incorporated elements of Slingshot, Riff and Rooms into the Facebook for iOS and Android apps,” she added.

Creative Labs was also behind Paper, the company’s alternative Facebook app, which is still only available on the US App Store. Personally, I’ve always preferred Paper’s interactions to the official Facebook app, but I feel like it’s going to follow the same path as the other Facebook apps.

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Dropbox Is Shutting Down Carousel and Mailbox→

Unsurprising news from the Dropbox blog this morning: the company is shutting down Mailbox and Carousel, its dedicated email and photo management apps:

Building new products is about learning as much as it’s about making. It’s also about tough choices. Over the past few months, we’ve increased our team’s focus on collaboration and simplifying the way people work together. In light of that, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Carousel and Mailbox.

The Carousel and Mailbox teams have built products that are loved by many people and their work will continue to have an impact. We’ll be taking key features from Carousel back to the place where your photos live—in the Dropbox app. We’ll also be using what we’ve learned from Mailbox to build new ways to communicate and collaborate on Dropbox (you can see early signs of this focus with Paper).

As for transitions:

We’re committed to making the transitions from these products as painless as possible. We’ve posted more information on the Carousel blog and the Mailbox blog, and we’ll be communicating details directly to users of both apps in the coming days. Mailbox will be shut down on February 26th, 2016, and Carousel will be shut down on March 31st, 2016.

I say “unsurprising” for two reasons. I first heard of key members leaving the Mailbox team months ago, and my understanding was that the product was already done at that point. But even without this tidbit of information, it was easy to guess what would happen – both apps had languished on the App Store without major updates, showing no signs of adopting new iOS features or new features at all.

As I wrote when Dropbox announced Paper:

I don’t want to see Dropbox losing focus in trying to understand what’s next for them with too many experiments and semi-abandoned initiatives. I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

Dropbox officially discontinuing two abandoned products can be interpreted as a willingness to regroup and focus. On the other hand, saying that Carousel had a future ahead just a few months ago and then discontinuing it today doesn’t help the company’s case for yet another app on top of Dropbox.

I’m a big Dropbox user – I store and share files with it every day – but I can see how other companies are implementing core Dropbox features faster than Dropbox can understand its place in 2015. However, as someone who doesn’t use iCloud Drive because I don’t trust it for work files, I genuinely hope Dropbox continues to exist for many years to come. Features like sharing, versions, easy restore of deleted files, clear app integrations, and its overall simplicity are still unmatched by Apple and others.

As for photos and email: Outlook for iOS is great, and you’d be better served by iCloud Photo Library or Google Photos anyway.

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Introducing the Relay FM Membership→

Big news from Relay FM today: you can now directly support your favorite shows (including the ones which I co-host, Connected and Virtual) with memberships.

From the beginning, Relay FM has been a community for podcasters, listeners and follow-uppers to share their common interests and passions. Now, with a Relay FM membership, you can directly support the hosts of your favorite shows.

There are two monthly tiers and an annual plan, and initial perks include bonus episodes of every show during Relay’s anniversary week in August, a monthly newsletter, and 15% off anything in the Relay store.

As someone who partially makes a living off memberships, I obviously think this model can work well for podcasts as well – I could argue that podcasts are even more personal than blogs, forming a stronger relationship between listeners and podcast creators.

Myke and Stephen have been working tirelessly to launch memberships, which make perfect sense as an addition to the Relay community. To become a member today, you can pick your favorite shows here.

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IBM Swift Sandbox→

Hi, I’m John Petitto, one of IBM’s Swift developers located at IBM’s Mobile Innovation Lab in Austin. We love Swift here and thought you would too so we are making our IBM Swift Sandbox available to developers on developerWorks.

The IBM Swift Sandbox is an interactive website that lets you write Swift code and execute it in a server environment – on top of Linux! Each sandbox runs on IBM Cloud in a Docker container. In addition, both the latest versions of Swift and its standard library are available for you to use.

Neat idea by IBM to write and execute Swift code in any desktop web browser. Too bad the web app is barely usable in iOS Safari because of text selection issues. I’d love to have something like this as a native iOS app eventually (if Apple allows it; but if they allow Pythonista, why not a Swift interpreter now that the language is open source?).

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Craig Federighi Talks Open Source Swift→

Writing for Ars Technica, Andrew Cunningham interviewed Craig Federighi on Swift going open source and how Apple is approaching open development:

The Swift team will be developing completely in the open on GitHub,” Federighi told Ars. “As they’re working day-to-day and making modifications to the language, including their work on Swift 3.0, all of that is going to be happening out in the open on GitHub.”

So instead of getting a big Swift 3.0 info dump at WWDC 2016 in the summer and then digging into the Xcode betas and adapting, developers can already find an “evolution document” on the Swift site that maps out where the language is headed in its next major version.

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