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WWDC: What I’ll use and what firms will copy

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This is going to be the norm for all computers soon but Macs soonest. You’re walking through your house writing a quick email on your iPhone and by the time you get to your desk, it’s becoming a long email. You’re wishing you hadn’t started it on the wee small screen there but you’re committed to it so you finish.

Not any more. From later this year when OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 are out, you’ll just put your iPhone down and carry on typing on your Mac. Exactly where you were. If it’s that long a bleedin’ email, you could then just pick up your iPad and head out of the house still writing it.

I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to between all three like that but I have regularly done that business with writing an email on my iPhone. I have very often had to leave for a meeting and therefore had to set things up on my iPad before I go. So the idea of just picking it up and going, I will do this. I will use this.

Apple calls it HandOff, as in handing off work to someone else or in this case some other machine. Samsung will probably call it OffHand and I rather like that better. But soon enough nobody will call it anything at all because this alchemy will be something normal that everybody uses everywhere.

I’ll also use this new business that if there’s no wifi for your iPad, it will connect to your phone and use that’s 3G or 4G connection. I do this now through tethering and it works fine, but it’s something else to remember to do. Something else to fiddle with instead of just working.

I am very big on not having to fiddle, not having to set up, not have to faff through a Wizard or something, but instead just getting on with the work I want to do.

That’s the big takeaway from this year’s WWDC for me. It’s really why I use and like Macs so that the annual announcement had more of this for both the Macs’ OS X and the iPhone/iPad’s iOS, I like that.

Speaking of iOS 8 and speaking of speaking, the only thing I wanted to see come some day was the ability to just talk to Siri on my iPhone instead of tapping a button first. Got it. The feature – it’s called HeySiri because that’s what you do, you say “Hey, Siri” and I’m not wild about that – will only work when the iPhone is plugged in but that’s fine. I add a lot of reminders to OmniFocus while I’m driving so that’s more than fine, that’s tremendous.

Speaking of more speaking of speaking, I’ve already tried an application that ostensibly let me make and receive phone calls through my Mac. It was rubbish. I regretted spending the money. But the odds are that with it part of OS X Yosemite, Apple will have made it work better. So I’m pre-sold on that one too.

I watched the WWDC video late last night and it was full of many little and large nuggets like this. Many, many times I’d nod thinking yep, I’m having that.

I did look at it from a very specific, biased view of simply what I was interested in and what I thought yep about. Possibly the best general roundup of all that was announced was done over on Wired. Do take a look, would you?

Especially as I did 5am-2am last night and swear to god I can’t remember who I am right now.

Jeff Goldblum and Steve Jobs on connecting to the internet

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Inspired by the video of today’s teenagers reacting to how the internet was in 1990 and also by how today is WWDC day where Apple announces something or other, let me show you two things.

One is the Apple way of getting online back in the olden days:

And then there’s this. This is the Apple announcement in 1999 when Steve Jobs demonstrated wifi. It’s now impossible to imagine there was a time we didn’t have this so, strangely, it’s also impossible to conceive how jolting this Jobs presentation was. As ever, wifi existed before, but as ever, you wouldn’t know it from how no other firm got us using it so completely.

Talk about being focused: The Purple Store

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Actually, is this really specific or is it remarkably wide open? MyNorthwest just profiled The Purple Store in Seattle:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you followed through on that crazy idea? Adam Sheridan, owner of The Purple Store in Seattle, did and now he’s shipping thousands of everyday items, in the color purple, to fans across the country.

It might seem an odd business choice, but Sheridan said he simply saw a void and filled it.

“People who like purple really like purple and in a perfect world, something fun like The Purple Store should exist,” he said. “We have found that you have an enthusiastic fan who might see a little bit of purple in a department store, but when they come here, their eyes light up and their jaws drop.”

Nothing but purple at Seattle’s The Purple Store – MyNorthwest.com

So it has to be purple, but otherwise it could be anything. Going through the website – of course there’s a website, of course it is purple too – you can currently buy purple dog bowls, a purple camouflage teeshirt (where exactly would that work other than here in The Purple Store?) and, well, other things. Okay, no, I’m going to say it because it took me ages to work this out. The Purple Store has a section called “Oh My!” in which, after you have clicked to say that you are over 18, it shows you purple sex toys. The first one I saw was purple electrical tape (3-roll set, $4.25, naturally only available in purple) and I’m still not 100% sure what – never mind, anyway.

The whole and the wholesome store is online here. Take a look at the full MyNorthwest article and the brief Time magazine report that told me about it.

It’s good to focus on things. Most of my productivity advice works whatever your job is but I chose to concentrate on writers because I am one and because this stuff helped me so much. Sorry, I say the word ‘concentrate’ there but ever since I heard of The Purple Store I’ve been wondering about the women moonbase staff in UFO and whether they got their hair there.

Oh.

You say something as a gag…

Where to watch Apple’s WWDC announcements

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Follow this handy guide based on how much you like Apple:

You’re vehemently anti-Apple:
Go anywhere you like and you’ll find plenty else to watch. I think there’s football somewhere. Or is that next week?

You’re vehemently an Apple fanatic:
You already know the answer.

You’re a vehemently uninterested in anything to do with technology:
Well, thanks for reading this site anyway.

You’re everybody else:
The short answer is that you should go to Apple’s WWDC Event page . That’s not only short, it’s obvious. But it’s also new. I’m sure I’ve seen some Apple announcement streamed live but until recently the quick way to find out what is and isn’t announced is to check out an unofficial Mac website and watch as they live-blog the event.

I loathe live blogs. I have mocked live blogs. I can live without being told what music Apple is playing before the event.

And I can live without any of the actual news Apple announces. Yet I like these events, I enjoy them and I would be watching the new live stream. Except:

You’re me:
Throughout the event you’ll be driving to a place near Stratford to talk with a reading group that you’re going to write a story for.

I am obviously and understandably excited about that, but yes, you can bet that on my way home I will see if the recording of the event is up.

This I might jailbreak for: always-on Siri

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I’ve never jailbroken my iPhones: never worked around Apple’s software to get other, unsanctioned apps onto my phones. I look at the whole idea of hot-wiring your iPhone, of tweaking settings and having to exploit undocumented holes in the system and I just think to bollocks with it all.

If you want to get your hands that dirty just to install some game or something, go get yourself an Android phone.

Jailbreaking fans argue that it’s worth the effort because you get much better apps this way. You get all these fantastic apps that Apple won’t allow on iPhones for, you know, minor reasons like security.

Name one app that’s actually worth the trouble.

And while you do, let’s remember that this trouble is not a one-time deal. It is at least every time there is a new update to the iOS software – any update, not just the biggies like moving from iOS 7 to iOS 8. Anything. Get an update, go back to your screwdrivers. And hope that Apple hasn’t closed this particular loophole.

Except.

If I had to name one app that was worth it, I’d pick this. OkSiri brings an Android feature (not available everywhere, not a regular Android feature but available on at least one Android phone) that I would like to see on iPhone. It makes Siri listen all the time. No pressing a button and waiting a mo before speaking to Siri, it is listening all the time. And specifically it is listening for a phrase such as “OK, Siri” that it then recognises as its cue to work.

The website 9to5 Mac that reported on this also reports that it’s flaky and the execution isn’t as good as the idea. But that’s Android and that’s jailbreaking to me.

CMO vs CIO – initials were never so absorbing

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Genuinely, this absorbed my attention and I knew so little about it that I had to look up what the initials stood for. CMO is Chief Marketing Officer and CIO is Chief Information Officer. Probably every corporation has them but allegedly most corporations don't have them working together very much at all.

But I was very tickled by how this piece pointed out a truly gigantic change that has happened with these jobs. It used to be that marketing people were a bit vague and nebulous, they had ideas but you coudn't really test them before doing them. It used to be that technology people in a company were the ones who knew how things could be done, what they would cost and what exact impact it would have.

Today marketing people have so much detail about customers that they can and they do model things like price changes and they know what the outcome will be. Whereas IT people are the ones who can't predict how much budgets will go over, who can't guarantee security and whose great work is undone by every member of staff who brings in an Android phone.

This Macworld piece is about Liz Allen, a former Apple marketing exec who has followed this change over the years and has a lot to say about it. I tell you, I was reading her comments on my phone as I raced around. Didn't have time to stop and read it properly yet couldn't help myself grabbing the next few seconds to read a bit more.

Here it is in full.

Video: full Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue interview

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The new Code Conference with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interviewed Apple's Eddy Cue with Jimmy Iovine – who as of this week is also with Apple. Though you may not be able to tell that from his cracks against the company's white earbud headphones.

Code Conference has posted the entire natter right here:

If This Then Digg

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If you're not using Digg, you're not doing the internet right. Apparently. As someone who isn't using the internet right, I regularly get told to use Digg and I regularly get convinced enough that I think I might get around to it. Today's telling might actually do it, though. Because I've been told it by IFTTT.

I use If This Then That a little bit. There are people who use the bejaysis out of IFTTT and fortunately they also use Digg. Because now IFTTT has added features to support this internet service:

Introducing the Digg Channel

Digg is the homepage of the internet, featuring the best articles, videos, and original content that the web is talking about right now.

IFTTT Blog

One of the example ways to use this Digg channel IFTTT is:

Get a Daily Email Digest with Popular Videos

I have no idea what videos are popular on Digg, but I'm going to use this to find out. Especially as I can presumably combine channels to chuck these new Digg things into Pocket or Evernote.

Sold.

Why bacon sandwiches are loud

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A while ago, I wrote my most poetic Self Distract blog post about how bacon sandwiches are loud:

Well, they are, aren’t they? Cucumber sandwiches tell you to be quiet and behave, that you’re in polite company and it’s business, they’re asking if you’ve polished your shoes and they’re warning you not to drink too much. Bacon sandwiches are much better, they’re all about slamming a mug of tea on the table, they’re saying ravenous and parched and that you’ve worked for these.

Bacon Sandwiches are Loud – William Gallagher, Self Distract (1 March 2013)

But usually it’s not the noise of a bacon sandwich that gets your attention, it’s the smell. And according to Time magazine, the American Chemical Society knows why:

 

Where weather icons come from

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As a design student at the Norwich School of Art in the early 1970s, Mark Allen watched the weather broadcast every afternoon on the BBC. Back then, TV presenters slid magnetic symbols around a metal map: dots for rain, asterisks for snow, lines to mark off areas of equal pressure. “They were just hieroglyphics as far as everybody was concerned,” Allen says. “Why was a triangle a rain shower?”

For his final project in 1974, Allen set out to make weather icons more intuitive. He looked to a set of pictograms by Otl Aicher, who devised spare, thick-lined figures for the 1972 Olympic Games. Allen used a similar style to trace a puffy cloud, adding simple icons to the bottom edge: rain droplets, lightning bolts, rays of sun. “The main vehicle was the cloud, and I hung everything off that,” he says. The BBC adopted Allen’s iconography in 1975, in exchange for 200 pounds and a small percentage of license fees. His drawings stayed on the air for 30 years.

Who Made That Weather Icon? – New York Times (23 May 2014)

Nice story about something I have never consciously noticed: how we went from faux Meteorological Office chart symbols to more recognisable ones. Read the full story.