Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:09 ◼   ► So as we record, we are about three weeks away from WWDC, which, if I'm honest, feels

00:00:16 ◼   ► a little bit wild to me that it has kind of snuck up on me this year.

00:00:19 ◼   ► I think I was so focused on development for the last few months that all of a sudden it's

00:00:22 ◼   ► like coming out of that haze and it's like, "Whoa, WWDC is like right there."

00:00:26 ◼   ► I think I actually just got my email asking me to confirm the name I wanted on my badge

00:00:31 ◼   ► and things.

00:00:32 ◼   ► It's like, "Whoa."

00:00:33 ◼   ► Like, the things got real, real fast.

00:00:35 ◼   ► But it made me think it would be an interesting time to look back on the last year.

00:00:41 ◼   ► You know, next, I think we have one more episode probably before WWDC happens, but this seems

00:00:47 ◼   ► like a good time to look back on the things that were announced a year ago and see how

00:00:52 ◼   ► they panned out, see some of the things that maybe we predicted or unpredicted that turned

00:00:59 ◼   ► out to be more or less useful.

00:01:00 ◼   ► And it's just an interesting thing because I think it's good to kind of set expectations

00:01:05 ◼   ► for what's going to happen in three weeks at this year's WWDC, that a lot of things

00:01:10 ◼   ► will get announced and sometimes they pan out and become important and significant and

00:01:15 ◼   ► sometimes they don't.

00:01:16 ◼   ► And I think that is a helpful kind of reset every year to make sure we're going into the

00:01:21 ◼   ► new technologies with open eyes because I've spent a lot of time in past years working

00:01:27 ◼   ► on technologies that didn't end up going anywhere.

00:01:30 ◼   ► And sometimes that's just sort of part of the game and if you want to be featured or

00:01:34 ◼   ► part of lists or things that are adopting new technologies or just make Apple happy

00:01:38 ◼   ► in general, that's part of the thing.

00:01:40 ◼   ► But it's also just good to kind of take stock and look back, I think.

00:01:45 ◼   ► And so I think we're just going to kind of walk through the four main platforms and just

00:01:48 ◼   ► looking at their kind of like what's new in the various platforms.

00:01:51 ◼   ► And we'll start with tvOS, which is a platform that neither of us really developed for.

00:01:56 ◼   ► But I think it's just interesting certainly to see.

00:01:58 ◼   ► And when they were announced, they had a whole bunch of new TV UI kit frameworks that you

00:02:04 ◼   ► can make richer tvOS apps, tvML, which is their kind of declarative, more HTML-y UI

00:02:12 ◼   ► system was improved and they made some improvements to the networking framework.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And as far as I can tell, I'm sure those are being used, but I think what is increasingly

00:02:20 ◼   ► we have been made clear is that tvOS is a platform for content providers.

00:02:25 ◼   ► It is not really a platform that is a general purpose app platform.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And I think that has just sort of become very clear with even Apple's sort of big media

00:02:35 ◼   ► events and things recently like that is seems to be where that platform is heading towards.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And maybe a little bit with the Apple Arcade thing, they're talking about trying to maybe

00:02:44 ◼   ► make it a bit more of a gamey platform, but still it is very much seems like it's a much

00:02:48 ◼   ► more focused, specific platform.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And so they're making tools that I'm sure like if you work on the Amazon app, the TV

00:02:55 ◼   ► UI kit stuff maybe is cool, but these aren't frameworks and platforms that kind of have

00:03:01 ◼   ► a broad utility.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I would even say it's even more narrow than that because the largest companies like

00:03:07 ◼   ► YouTube or Amazon that have Apple TV apps usually aren't using a lot of the native stuff.

00:03:13 ◼   ► They're using a lot more like their custom stuff or web-based rendering or whatever it

00:03:17 ◼   ► is to make like their own custom layout so that they don't work like standard Apple TV

00:03:22 ◼   ► apps and instead they follow their own platform guidelines or their own branding guidelines

00:03:25 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:03:26 ◼   ► But yeah, I think tvOS is like the messages apps, which I think we'll get to actually

00:03:33 ◼   ► in a few minutes.

00:03:34 ◼   ► You know, Apple launched the ability to make apps in this new area.

00:03:38 ◼   ► At first, many of us tried it thinking, "Oh, this could be interesting.

00:03:41 ◼   ► This could become a thing."

00:03:44 ◼   ► And it just didn't for most apps.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And then it kind of figured out what it was for, which was a much smaller set of things

00:03:51 ◼   ► than how it was pitched initially or how we assumed it would be initially.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And that's okay once you find that area, but it is usually the path of getting there involves

00:04:02 ◼   ► a lot of wasted effort, unfortunately.

00:04:06 ◼   ► So then we can talk about macOS, which I think it's sort of big marquee developer feature

00:04:11 ◼   ► was dark mode.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And then there's a bunch of things around the Mac App Store got a big kind of overhaul,

00:04:19 ◼   ► including things like they got the ratings and reviews API that we've had on iOS for

00:04:24 ◼   ► a while.

00:04:25 ◼   ► The Notarized App System, which is kind of a more advanced version of the old kind of

00:04:30 ◼   ► developer ID program.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And then it seemed like they had a whole collection of machine learning related sort of APIs that

00:04:37 ◼   ► were added.

00:04:38 ◼   ► And from a developer perspective, I think the big things that come out and I think that

00:04:42 ◼   ► in some ways have been true is like the Mac App Store getting an overhaul was long overdue.

00:04:47 ◼   ► And I think it's certainly a positive thing and seems to certainly be setting the groundwork

00:04:51 ◼   ► for what we expect to happen in the next year, where there's likely going to be an influx

00:04:56 ◼   ► of more Mac apps to the platform.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And they've made the Mac App Store kind of ready for that.

00:05:02 ◼   ► It was before this update, it was in a really rough place.

00:05:05 ◼   ► I mean, it only worked half the time, I think, and visually it kind of had fallen behind.

00:05:10 ◼   ► And especially in contrast to all of the work they had done in the iOS App Store with the

00:05:15 ◼   ► Today tab and the really strong editorial voice and artwork and assets and all these

00:05:21 ◼   ► things that they were doing on that platform, the Mac App Store had felt really fallen behind.

00:05:25 ◼   ► And I was glad to think, and I think that is, I don't know if that's necessarily boosted

00:05:31 ◼   ► Mac developer sales or whatever, but I think it's overall a good thing.

00:05:34 ◼   ► And it seems like it's setting the groundwork.

00:05:36 ◼   ► And that side of it is definitely good.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And I mean, dark mode, I use dark mode on my Mac OS machines.

00:05:44 ◼   ► I like it.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I think mostly in some ways, I feel like it's nice.

00:05:48 ◼   ► And in the same way, it's also like it's setting the groundwork for something that I think

00:05:51 ◼   ► we're going to expect to get in iOS.

00:05:54 ◼   ► And so in some ways, it almost felt like the dry run, testing it out and maybe trying to

00:05:59 ◼   ► encourage people to adopt it for websites and things that if they can put the infrastructure

00:06:06 ◼   ► in place so that you can have websites that can detect dark mode and those types of situations,

00:06:12 ◼   ► then when iOS gets one potentially, more things will be ready for that.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And so that launch will be even better.

00:06:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, Mac OS this past year with the Mojave release, I think it's, in a lot of cases,

00:06:27 ◼   ► will have a year where you just have to do more busy work or keeping up with Apple or

00:06:36 ◼   ► keeping up with platform expectations, user expectations.

00:06:39 ◼   ► You have to do more of that than exciting new feature development.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And I think Mojave was one of those releases for Mac developers of the public expects all

00:06:49 ◼   ► apps to support dark mode immediately as soon as it was being available, which for a lot

00:06:54 ◼   ► of apps, it was actually a good deal of work.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And then you also have to deal with all the new security restrictions in Mojave, which

00:07:00 ◼   ► for some apps is, again, a pretty big deal.

00:07:03 ◼   ► You have to deal with the notarization process, which for some build processes is a very big

00:07:07 ◼   ► deal.

00:07:08 ◼   ► There's all this kind of costs you have to deal with in this release.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And there really wasn't a lot of upside for developers with Mojave, not to mention the

00:07:18 ◼   ► fact that Apple had previewed Marzipan last year, which probably didn't help Mac developers'

00:07:24 ◼   ► morale either because I'm working on this giant AppKit app for what exactly, if this

00:07:29 ◼   ► is going to be replaced in a year or deprecated in a year.

00:07:33 ◼   ► So I think this was kind of a rough year for Mac developers.

00:07:35 ◼   ► It was a whole lot of dealing with busy work kind of stuff or churn kind of work and not

00:07:43 ◼   ► a lot of ability to make forward progress.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think it is a strange thing too when I think of how, I mean, Mac OS is such

00:07:51 ◼   ► a mature platform in so many ways that its improvements and changes are these much more

00:07:58 ◼   ► busy work and minor changes.

00:08:01 ◼   ► It's been a long time, it feels like, since Mac OS got big sweeping, more fundamental

00:08:07 ◼   ► capabilities, things that aren't visual changes.

00:08:11 ◼   ► They went through and certainly there was the movement towards the transparent windows

00:08:15 ◼   ► and all the work that had to be done with that.

00:08:17 ◼   ► And now we have dark mode, those changes feel very superficial because they're not addressing

00:08:25 ◼   ► the fundamentals of the OS, they're addressing just the kind of the veneer on top.

00:08:31 ◼   ► And it is a strange time to be a Mac OS developer, I'm sure.

00:08:37 ◼   ► I'm not one particularly myself, but certainly speaking to people who are.

00:08:43 ◼   ► It's a world in flux and I think Mojave was this very much this sort of transitional species

00:08:49 ◼   ► between where they are coming from and kind of these hints towards where Apple is going

00:08:56 ◼   ► to be driving the platform.

00:08:58 ◼   ► And that's in some ways exciting that Apple is paying attention, they're doing things

00:09:04 ◼   ► on this platform that doesn't feel neglected.

00:09:05 ◼   ► There's definitely been in the last few years, some years where it's like the updates were

00:09:11 ◼   ► basically nothing.

00:09:12 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of some of them, like Sierra or High Sierra, there was one of them

00:09:16 ◼   ► where it's like, it's basically like no new features.

00:09:19 ◼   ► We just kind of made everything better here, which is good in some ways, but like in terms

00:09:24 ◼   ► of bug fixing and stability and performance, but it's not great in terms of feeling like

00:09:29 ◼   ► you're working on a platform that has a lot of attention and emphasis and priority within

00:09:35 ◼   ► Apple.

00:09:36 ◼   ► So like in that sense, it's good.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Another thing they also talked about, and I think I'll bring them up here on Mac OS,

00:09:43 ◼   ► but I feel like on a variety of Apple's platforms, they have a lot of this machine learning and

00:09:48 ◼   ► very kind of academic capabilities.

00:09:52 ◼   ► On Mac OS, they added Create ML, which is a way of kind of creating and building custom

00:09:56 ◼   ► machine learning models.

00:09:57 ◼   ► In iOS, they have a whole bunch of core ML capabilities.

00:10:03 ◼   ► I always think these, whenever I see these slides, I kind of feel bad because I feel

00:10:10 ◼   ► like this is a technology that Apple seems to be putting a fair amount of energy and

00:10:14 ◼   ► effort into, but I don't really know what it's being used for.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And like the only apps that I can think of that I'm aware of that use this are camera

00:10:25 ◼   ► apps that sometimes do vaguely machine learning stuff for some of their image processing.

00:10:32 ◼   ► But it seems like one of these technologies that there's a lot of effort, and every year

00:10:36 ◼   ► it keeps coming up, it's getting better and better and better, and all this machine learning

00:10:40 ◼   ► stuff.

00:10:41 ◼   ► But I'm not really sure if it's being used, and if the fact that I'm not using it in my

00:10:46 ◼   ► applications means that I'm missing a big opportunity.

00:10:49 ◼   ► But it's a strange thing to just kind of have this technology that keeps getting better

00:10:55 ◼   ► and better, but is completely orthogonal to what it is that I use and think about, and

00:11:01 ◼   ► even understand to some degree.

00:11:03 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:11:04 ◼   ► It's just a funny feeling to see it kind of go pop by every year, and it's like, oh, yeah,

00:11:08 ◼   ► it's like apparently their machine learning is great and is now 10 times faster and is

00:11:12 ◼   ► like awesome in all these great ways.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And it's like, I don't really, but it's like they're showing me this super awesome hammer,

00:11:17 ◼   ► but I have no nails.

00:11:18 ◼   ► So.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I was gonna make like a kitchen tool analogy.

00:11:24 ◼   ► It's like they keep making like a bread maker, and every year they make an even better bread

00:11:28 ◼   ► maker.

00:11:29 ◼   ► And actually most people don't need a bread maker, and I wish I did because you keep making

00:11:33 ◼   ► these awesome bread makers, but I just don't really need one.

00:11:37 ◼   ► And there may come a day where I do need a bread maker, and I'm gonna be really happy

00:11:40 ◼   ► this is here.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And I keep looking around like, maybe, how can I use a bread maker?

00:11:45 ◼   ► Maybe I can use it, and I just, I can't figure it out.

00:11:48 ◼   ► I have tried various ways and techniques to possibly use all this cool ML stuff in my

00:11:55 ◼   ► apps, and I just.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I haven't yet come up with anything that, where it was actually the right tool for the

00:12:00 ◼   ► job, or actually could do something compelling that was worth the massive investment it takes

00:12:04 ◼   ► and the computational power and everything else.

00:12:06 ◼   ► It's the kind of thing like, someday I will come up with a feature where ML is the right

00:12:13 ◼   ► tool to use, but that day has not yet come.

00:12:15 ◼   ► But when that day comes, I'm gonna be really glad this is there.

00:12:17 ◼   ► - And you can make some delicious bread.

00:12:19 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:12:20 ◼   ► - And I feel like it's, I imagine what's happening here is I think these are technologies and

00:12:26 ◼   ► frameworks that Apple themselves are using.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And they talk, they like to talk up their machine learning and how smart their machines

00:12:33 ◼   ► are, and things like the Photos app, being clever about doing suggestions or whatever

00:12:39 ◼   ► it is.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And it's all on-device machine learning, which is their big thing, so that it's more private

00:12:43 ◼   ► and maintainable.

00:12:44 ◼   ► And I think, in some ways, I feel like these things are, they're just exposing to us the

00:12:51 ◼   ► frameworks and systems that they've built internally for their own use.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And one that is sort of both, which has the benefit both of potentially moving their platform

00:12:59 ◼   ► forward, maybe it's finding more bugs in the system because more developers are using it.

00:13:04 ◼   ► And it's also, maybe it's just like it's a free thing.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Like they've done all the work, and now they may as well kind of export that to the world.

00:13:11 ◼   ► But yeah, I look forward to the day when something like this would sort of all comes together.

00:13:17 ◼   ► And I will give Apple credit for, I've read many times when I've seen frameworks and things

00:13:21 ◼   ► that kind of don't really make sense initially, and then a couple years later suddenly make

00:13:26 ◼   ► a lot of sense.

00:13:28 ◼   ► You can imagine things like auto layout, where it's like when all of our development was

00:13:33 ◼   ► happening on 320 by 480 devices, auto layout didn't make much sense at all.

00:13:38 ◼   ► But they had announced it in that world.

00:13:41 ◼   ► And then it was like a year or two later, suddenly we have different sized iPhones,

00:13:44 ◼   ► and suddenly it makes a lot more sense why you might want a dynamic and intelligent layout

00:13:49 ◼   ► system that, you know, it's like there's a lot of times where obviously they know what's

00:13:53 ◼   ► coming down the road, and so maybe, you know, machine learning is going to be something

00:13:58 ◼   ► that is important, you know, for us in our future.

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00:15:49 ◼   ► The next platform that is probably worth talking about is WatchOS 5, which is actually a platform

00:15:54 ◼   ► that we both, I think, did extensive work on in the last year, or at least took advantage

00:15:59 ◼   ► of.

00:16:00 ◼   ► There's four kind of marquee features to it, and I think we covered at least two of them.

00:16:05 ◼   ► The biggest, so they are Siri's shortcut support.

00:16:08 ◼   ► And this is, for example, being able to export shortcuts for your app and have those become

00:16:13 ◼   ► available on the Siri watch face.

00:16:15 ◼   ► That's the primary kind of way in which you can interact with it on WatchOS.

00:16:19 ◼   ► It made notifications more interactive, which is nice.

00:16:24 ◼   ► They added the ability to do progress indication on file transfers, which seems like a minor

00:16:32 ◼   ► feature, but was a pretty marquee one in many ways.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Background audio playback, which was significant for you.

00:16:39 ◼   ► Then they updated the Workout APIs to make them much better.

00:16:44 ◼   ► And so I can start off talking about the things that I think overall it was a good year for

00:16:49 ◼   ► WatchOS.

00:16:50 ◼   ► I think it got a lot of capability that was nice.

00:16:53 ◼   ► At least the tricky thing about the year, I think, is that a lot of the improvements

00:16:57 ◼   ► were much more low level than they were superficial.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Like we didn't get any interactive UI framework or some of the kind of things that are still

00:17:06 ◼   ► on my wish list for WatchOS.

00:17:07 ◼   ► But the new Workout API was amazing.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And it is a really, really improved what I'm able to do in my Workout apps to make it so

00:17:16 ◼   ► that it's much more comparable to Apple's.

00:17:19 ◼   ► And I think that is something that was something that I liked seeing in WatchOS 5.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Apple wasn't taking steps to allow third party to make third party apps be more equivalent

00:17:33 ◼   ► to their built-in counterparts.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Because previously there were things that we just couldn't do.

00:17:38 ◼   ► And one of the huge things with the Workout APIs is that they changed it so that if you

00:17:44 ◼   ► are ever killed for resource constraints or all kinds of weird things that WatchOS would

00:17:49 ◼   ► just randomly kill you for--

00:17:50 ◼   ► It happens all the time.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like it happens all the time and there's only so much you can do about it.

00:17:54 ◼   ► But if you're running a workout, you immediately get relaunched.

00:17:57 ◼   ► And you can resume where you picked off.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And the user will likely never know.

00:18:02 ◼   ► It's almost like these hiccups that were causing all kinds of problems and were somewhat unavoidable

00:18:07 ◼   ► and are kind of terrible because if someone's doing a workout, the last thing you want is

00:18:11 ◼   ► to lose their data because there was some resource constraint on the device and suddenly

00:18:19 ◼   ► your app's killed.

00:18:20 ◼   ► It stopped collecting data.

00:18:21 ◼   ► That's awful.

00:18:22 ◼   ► They changed it so that it just relaunches you as well as there's a whole bunch of low-level

00:18:26 ◼   ► health kit stuff that it made so that it'll do a lot of the heavy, heavy lifting for you

00:18:31 ◼   ► that I'm not having to juggle all of these health samples that previously you would have

00:18:36 ◼   ► to.

00:18:37 ◼   ► And so overall, I think it was a good year in that sense.

00:18:39 ◼   ► And I hope that they can kind of pull up some of these equivalencies from low-level system

00:18:45 ◼   ► frameworks and health and so on up into the UI in years coming forward.

00:18:50 ◼   ► But how was audio playback?

00:18:53 ◼   ► It was basically like they read my blog post about why I can't make a good Watch podcast

00:18:58 ◼   ► player and did like three-quarters of the things I asked for.

00:19:01 ◼   ► That was great for me.

00:19:03 ◼   ► It was great in the sense that I could finally do it.

00:19:05 ◼   ► It was a little burdensome in the sense that I now had to do it.

00:19:10 ◼   ► And so it took my entire summer last year basically.

00:19:15 ◼   ► I know a lot of developers last year, they looked at what was on iOS and watchOS and

00:19:18 ◼   ► it wasn't that much stuff and they were like, "Oh, great.

00:19:20 ◼   ► We'll have a nice, easy summer.

00:19:21 ◼   ► It'll take some time off, get some relaxation in, not have a lot of work to do."

00:19:26 ◼   ► Meanwhile, I had tons of work to do because of the background audio enhancements.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And I got to say, I still fantasize about dropping the WC session file transfer completely.

00:19:38 ◼   ► I would love to no longer use file transfers between the phone and the watch because they're

00:19:44 ◼   ► so slow and unreliable.

00:19:48 ◼   ► And so I would love to get rid of that.

00:19:50 ◼   ► But at least they made it slightly more usable last year by adding a progress value on it

00:19:55 ◼   ► so I could display something to the user besides, "This may get there someday."

00:19:59 ◼   ► - Good luck.

00:20:00 ◼   ► - But yeah, so I was very busy last summer with this stuff.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And ultimately, it was a very specialized year for watchOS.

00:20:10 ◼   ► If you were a workout app or an audio app, you had a lot of work to do on watchOS.

00:20:15 ◼   ► If you were anything else, you probably didn't have anything to do.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And I guess it's a tricky thing to make sense in that I think Apple has clearly defined

00:20:26 ◼   ► the focus of the platform.

00:20:27 ◼   ► In the same ways, in some ways, like we were talking about with tvOS, where it is becoming

00:20:32 ◼   ► more niche and focused, that the watch, I think, is increasingly in that direction as

00:20:37 ◼   ► well.

00:20:38 ◼   ► That if you're a fitness app or a health and fitness app in that genre, it's a great platform

00:20:42 ◼   ► for you.

00:20:43 ◼   ► They're putting a lot of work in.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And I think the media side is an area that they're also showing some interest in.

00:20:47 ◼   ► And I think that works well for the story with AirPods.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And just in general, it seems to be a focus for that platform.

00:20:54 ◼   ► But if you're trying to do something else on the watch, there doesn't seem to be nearly

00:20:59 ◼   ► as much support underlying it, which is probably fine.

00:21:03 ◼   ► And it's probably a good thing for the platform that their attention is focused in a few areas

00:21:07 ◼   ► rather than spread out in trying to make it like the next big general purpose computing

00:21:12 ◼   ► platform.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Lastly, I think, is iOS, and so we had ARKit 2, which is very exciting.

00:21:19 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:21:20 ◼   ► - See, ARKit 2, it's exactly like the ML stuff we were saying earlier.

00:21:24 ◼   ► It's like, this is another amazing specialty tool that Apple has made available to us.

00:21:31 ◼   ► And I just have zero use for it right now.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And maybe, again, maybe someday I will have a use for AR.

00:21:39 ◼   ► They are sure investing very heavily in it.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Maybe if there's these rumored AR glasses down the line, maybe that will give a significant

00:21:48 ◼   ► boost to reasons why we would have to use this.

00:21:51 ◼   ► But right now, I have no use for this.

00:21:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is a strange feeling.

00:22:01 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like it's something that actually is being used in real life very much.

00:22:05 ◼   ► It is something that, just in my normal tech-savvy interest-sake utility, it doesn't actually

00:22:13 ◼   ► come up.

00:22:14 ◼   ► And what's strange to me, too, is how one of their toy examples is often, you know the

00:22:19 ◼   ► thing where you go to the fender store and you can see the guitar and you can put it

00:22:24 ◼   ► in your real world and see how big it is?

00:22:27 ◼   ► They've created this whole web system for doing that, but Apple doesn't do it themselves,

00:22:33 ◼   ► which feels really weird that there's this technology and they're talking about it.

00:22:38 ◼   ► But what if I want to see a 13-inch MacBook Pro on my desk next to a 12-inch MacBook?

00:22:47 ◼   ► That seems like something that should exist in the Apple Store app.

00:22:52 ◼   ► There's real-world use cases where that's actually kind of interesting, or how big does

00:22:56 ◼   ► an iMac look like on my desk?

00:22:59 ◼   ► These are use cases that they promote and talk about, but they're not using it themselves

00:23:04 ◼   ► even yet, which makes me think it is more of a tech demo.

00:23:08 ◼   ► It is more of a building awareness and trying to establish some territory in this emerging

00:23:16 ◼   ► field rather than necessarily something that is ready for prime time.

00:23:22 ◼   ► If they're not even using it themselves for some of its toy examples, it doesn't feel

00:23:26 ◼   ► like it's quite ready for broader use in the world.

00:23:34 ◼   ► I looked over my notes from last year's keynote, and they started out with a very

00:23:38 ◼   ► heavy AR push last year.

00:23:40 ◼   ► They brought up this file format, the USDZ file format, that if I understand it correctly

00:23:46 ◼   ► would be the kind of thing of a website could put a USDZ file on a shopping website on each

00:23:53 ◼   ► item the same way they would have a preview image of this item.

00:23:56 ◼   ► They could have this file that then you could preview this item in AR in your office or

00:24:02 ◼   ► house or whatever, so you could see how big it is, or you could turn it around or whatever.

00:24:06 ◼   ► I would love that.

00:24:07 ◼   ► That sounds amazing.

00:24:09 ◼   ► I do a lot of online shopping, and frequently I end up being surprised when something arrives

00:24:15 ◼   ► of like, "Oh, that's a lot bigger or smaller than I expected it to be."

00:24:19 ◼   ► To have something where you can contextualize, like, "How does this item look in my actual

00:24:23 ◼   ► place?"

00:24:24 ◼   ► That's great.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I don't think anybody's doing it yet.

00:24:28 ◼   ► You said even Apple isn't doing it.

00:24:30 ◼   ► I think that could be a wonderful future for AR, but it doesn't seem like it's the

00:24:35 ◼   ► present yet.

00:24:36 ◼   ► The next big thing I think in iOS was Siri shortcuts and the shortcuts app in general,

00:24:41 ◼   ► which I would say is a successful platform in terms of the way that it has rolled out.

00:24:48 ◼   ► I think what has worked really well in its favor is that bare bones shortcut support

00:24:55 ◼   ► is relatively easy to do in terms of if you just donate your actions on a regular basis,

00:25:02 ◼   ► you're starting to be part of that system.

00:25:06 ◼   ► I'm not sure how...

00:25:08 ◼   ► I feel like it's a fairly niche platform though for doing really robust shortcut support,

00:25:14 ◼   ► but it certainly is one that seems like it's in the slow emerging place.

00:25:22 ◼   ► I think Siri shortcuts as opposed to ARKit or ML feels like something that is getting

00:25:28 ◼   ► some use, that is finding some traction even if that is more niche or focused.

00:25:34 ◼   ► It is an area where it provides clear and obvious utility, which makes it much more

00:25:39 ◼   ► compelling and interesting as a result.

00:25:42 ◼   ► To me, the way that watchOS last year was basically nothing unless you wanted to use

00:25:47 ◼   ► the new audio or workout APIs, I think shortcuts is that thing for iOS.

00:25:52 ◼   ► The last year about iOS has been all about whether you supported shortcuts or not and

00:25:59 ◼   ► how much you supported it.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Shortcuts in its current incantation is actually very limited.

00:26:03 ◼   ► You can't do a lot of stuff like dynamic variables or more like parameterized kind of commands.

00:26:11 ◼   ► A lot of the media playback stuff is super primitive.

00:26:15 ◼   ► There was a whole bunch about shortcuts that I wanted to do but couldn't and a lot of apps

00:26:19 ◼   ► faced the same problem of like, we'd like to have more arbitrary commands but we just

00:26:23 ◼   ► can't do that.

00:26:26 ◼   ► What you could do with shortcuts last year was actually not that much.

00:26:29 ◼   ► It wasn't that much work for most people, again, unless you make an audio app, in which

00:26:32 ◼   ► case you had to work around a whole bunch of weird bugs and weird timing interruption

00:26:39 ◼   ► things and everything.

00:26:41 ◼   ► I had a busy summer.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Shortcuts was way more work than I thought it would be but ultimately it was a pretty

00:26:47 ◼   ► easy year for people on iOS.

00:26:50 ◼   ► There wasn't that much for us to do in regards to new APIs or keeping up with the platform

00:26:55 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:26:56 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:26:57 ◼   ► I'm trying to think.

00:26:58 ◼   ► The other little things they added were, it's like they had health records which is one

00:27:02 ◼   ► of those, if you're a medical, if you're a hospital, that's a great and interesting platform

00:27:05 ◼   ► and really cool but it's very, very niche.

00:27:08 ◼   ► They added effects to sticker packs.

00:27:11 ◼   ► >> If you still make a messages app, that's great.

00:27:15 ◼   ► That's an even more specialized use than health records.

00:27:18 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:27:19 ◼   ► The messages platform has not grown and developed as much as they keep kind of pushing it on.

00:27:25 ◼   ► They keep changing how aggressively they show it in iMessage and it still just doesn't seem

00:27:30 ◼   ► like it's kind of going anywhere for anything other than stickers for big brands and media

00:27:37 ◼   ► companies.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I mean, iMessage, like popular stickers do okay.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Nothing else seems to.

00:27:43 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:27:44 ◼   ► And see, we have interactive controls and notifications which if I'm honest, I haven't

00:27:48 ◼   ► actually seen very much.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Like they did a variety of changes to make notifications richer and more dynamic and

00:27:55 ◼   ► I just haven't seen many apps take advantage of that.

00:27:59 ◼   ► I don't know exactly why but that doesn't seem to have happened much.

00:28:03 ◼   ► But I will say the last one feature they added is the authentication services stuff which

00:28:07 ◼   ► is like the password auto fill and integration with one password and stuff and that I think

00:28:11 ◼   ► has gone really well.

00:28:13 ◼   ► It's very noticeable how lots of apps support it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► The logging in process for new applications is much more seamless and straightforward

00:28:22 ◼   ► than it used to be and so that's one huge win and I'm always delighted when I use an

00:28:26 ◼   ► app that supports it.

00:28:28 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:28:29 ◼   ► >> All right, so that is the year in review.

00:28:32 ◼   ► I think overall it was a good year.

00:28:35 ◼   ► It was one of those years where they announced a lot of things.

00:28:38 ◼   ► Some of it went kind of over our heads or kind of sideways but overall the things that

00:28:44 ◼   ► they announced were useful largely and it's very targeted and focused on who got the improvements

00:28:51 ◼   ► but if you were in one of those industries or areas that needed an improvement and you

00:28:55 ◼   ► got it, you got a good improvement and it went well.

00:28:57 ◼   ► So that's kind of what I was hoping.

00:29:00 ◼   ► So that's always what I kind of hoped for rather than the messages stuff where here's

00:29:03 ◼   ► this great new platform, this whole new thing and you spend time working on it and then

00:29:06 ◼   ► it just kind of goes nowhere which I don't think seeing it happen this year is quite

00:29:09 ◼   ► as much.

00:29:10 ◼   ► >> Let's hope Marzipan goes better than that.

00:29:12 ◼   ► >> Let's hope.

00:29:13 ◼   ► >> And I think it will.

00:29:14 ◼   ► I think that's going to be the big story this year.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Anyway, thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to you in two weeks.

00:29:19 ◼   ► >> Bye.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Bye.

00:29:21 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]