apple

This is how it should be: a Safari Extension I’ll use hourly

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Not only will I use it hourly but I want to use it hourly now. The quick news: 1Password will use Extensions so that within Safari, you can get it to enter your username and password.

The slightly less quick news with more detail and enthusiasm… In case you haven’t come across it yet, 1Password is one of those apps that stores your passwords for you. Fine. It also creates ones like Wel6cAct9iB9Bit (that really is one it created, I just got it to do that). It creates these strong passwords and then saves them for you so that you don’t have to remember. You just have to remember the one password you need to get into 1Password. It works on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, PC, Windows, all sorts.

The phone and tablet versions come with their own web browser too. So if I’m organised, I can go into my 1Password app, tap on the name of my bank and that browser will zoom off to their site. Goes to the site, enters my username and some of my security details, then it even presses return. Only with my bank do I stop there. With other things I log into like TheTrainLine.com, it does the lot. One tap takes me to the site and then into the site. Another single tap and 1Password has entered all my credit card details for me.

Except I’m often not that organised. Very often, I will go a site in the regular iPhone Safari web browser and after a lot of fiddling like picking train times, I will reach the login or credit card screen and wish I’d remembered to do this in 1Password. Usually, I nip over to the 1Password app, copy the detail I need and go paste it into Safari. But just occasionally, I’ve moved over to 1Password and redone the whole job just to save that schlepping about.

Not any more. Behind the scenes it’s going to be using Touch ID and Safari Extensions but no matter: in future, when I’ve gone to a site in the ordinary Safari browser, I will still be able to use 1Password to enter my details.

This is how it is on the Mac and PC: wherever I am, I can whack a login detail or an over-used credit card in with a tap or two. This is how it will be on iPhones and iPads.

The company isn’t saying when it will happen but there is a limited beta test going on now and it all requires the forthcoming iOS 8. So you can bet that when the next iPhones come out around September, so will the new 1Password. No idea yet whether it will be a paid upgrade or a freebie but whichever, I’m having it. (Though it must be said, as great as 1Password is in every other way I know, upgrading to a major new version is agony.)

Here’s where you can learn more of the latest official release of 1Password and here’s a shaky video of the beta in action:

Looks like I chose the wrong one: Apple kills Aperture

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So Apple brings out this Aperture software and at first everyone thinks it’s the consumer iPhoto or it’s a Photoshop knockoff. They think it’s too complicated to successfully be the former and too rubbish to be the later. But Adobe launches Lightroom and now with two big applications in the same area, that area becomes a market.

For some years now, if you were a professional photographer or you just fancied being one (hello) then you either bought Aperture or Lightroom for the managing of your photos.

Not any more.

As of now, Aperture is dead.

With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture.

When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS.

That’s Apple’s official announcement. The company is also helping people move to Lightroom.

But I like Aperture. I can carry on using it but it won’t be developed further and it’s true that Lightroom has more and better features. But Aperture was a bionic iPhoto to me and I liked it. So I’m not happy at Apple’s decision.

But them’s the breaks. You invest in a piece of software – both literally and, I think more importantly, in time and effort – and the software goes away.

It’s hard.

Present imperfect

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I do a lot of presenting now so I’m thinking about it all constantly and yesterday’s Google presentation isn’t helping. But it is fascinating. Cult of Android ran this story, We Watched Google’s 3-Hour Keynote So You Wouldn’t Have To which tells you the Android community’s take but cult of Mac, on the other hand, went for this:

As the event dragged on, the tone on Twitter went from restrained interest about Google’s somewhat underwhelming announcements to reports of sleeping reporters and jabs at the ponderous presentation’s length. “Apple just launched a keynote shortener,” tweeted Dave Pell

That’s from a piece called Copy this please: 9 things Apple can teach Google about Keynotes. It continues:

Find your Steve Jobs: Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, so Apple looked inside and found a suitable replacement to become the face of the company. Apple exec Craig Federighi emerged as the company’s new “Superman” presenter at this year’s WWDC. Google’s Sundar Pichai might be “the most powerful man in mobile,” but he’s no Federighi.

Cult of Mac writer Lewis Wallace is right that Craig Federighi is quite the star presenter now. But he wasn’t before. It takes time and standing up in front of millions of people online before you get that good. So hopefully Google will take a telling from how poorly this year’s event went and is going to come back strong.

When you’ve got that new job, do this

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Last month, as you might have heard, I started a new job.

That’s Angela Ahrendts, previously world famous (in the retail and business world) for being the CEO of Burberry. I hadn’t even heard of Burberry. Now she’s world famous (in the computing world as well as retail and business) for being the new Senior Vice President of Apple Retail. If you don’t happen to know who runs what in Apple, I commend you on your excellent life choices. But this is an interesting position because it’s been done so extraordinarily well that it transformed Apple into the success it is – and it’s been done so badly that there were visible dents in that success.

Now Ahrendts is in charge and everything I read impresses me. But today what I read is nothing to do with Apple, it’s her writing on LinkedIn about what it is like taking a very big change in one’s employer or one’s career.

I am by no means an expert at these transitions, but I’ve always tried to be consistent in how I run, exit and begin in a new business. I thought I would share a few professional and personal insights which are helping me adapt to a new sector, culture and country. (Silicon Valley can feel like a country unto itself!)

…Also, trust your instincts and emotions. Let them guide you in every situation; they will not fail you. Never will your objectivity be as clear or your instincts sharper than in the first 30-90 days. Cherish this time and fight the urge to overthink. Real human dialogue and interaction where you can feel and be felt will be invaluable as your vision, enabled by your instincts, becomes clearer. In honor of the great American poet Maya Angelou, always remember, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I would argue this is even more important in the early days.

Starting Anew – Angela Ahrendts, LinkedIn (23 June 2014)

Her full piece isn’t a huge amount longer but it’s worth your time.

Microsoft giveth

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From next month, users of Microsoft’s Dropbox-like OneDrive will get 15Gb free instead of the current 7Gb. If you’re an Office 365 subscriber, that goes up to an is-this-a-misprint size of 1Tb.

Microsoft:

Our data tells us that 3 out of 4 people have less than 15 GB of files stored on their PC. Factoring in what they may also have stored on other devices, we believe providing 15 GB for free right out of the gate – with no hoops to jump through – will make it much easier for people to have their documents, videos, and photos available in one place.

Massive increase to OneDrive storage plans – Omar Shahine, OneDrive blog (23 June 2014)

Seriously? I think the 15Gb free space is tremendous but why claim 75% of all computer users have no more taken up than that? I don’t mean to be rude questioning “our data” but it is unsubstantiated. And this is Microsoft, the company whose user testing of Microsoft Word seemingly failed to include any tester trying to open an existing document or create a new one. Hmm. Everything makes sense now.

So does Microsoft making this generous deal and doing so now. OneDrive is Microsoft’s version of Dropbox and right from the start it has offered more space than that service. But now Apple is shuffling its iCloud service so that instead of only an invisible repository for documents, it’s going to be an actual space you can reach and add files to.

It’s not like I think Microsoft should say “hey, we’ve got this one rival we’re trying to unseat, right, and now there’s bleedin’ Apple coming along AGAIN, we’re going to shove some free space at you”. But the 15Gb is sufficiently generous that I think it could’ve just said that and not tried to claim that it can hold all the documents and images and music of all but 25% of computer users.

I don’t have a Microsoft OneDrive account and I do have a Dropbox one. To be honest, I do relish how useful Dropbox is and it would take work to switch away. You could and probably should have Dropbox and OneDrive, that would make a lot of sense for storing documents in places you could reach wherever you are.

But I have a low faff level. I already think it’s bad enough with iCloud that I have to think first, which application did I write that document in? And how I do sometimes have to stop to ponder, did I do that in Pages and store it in iCloud or did I do it in Evernote? I’m also an OmniOutliner user which comes with the Omni Group’s brilliantly-named OmniPresence.

Somehow without intending to, I’ve become fractured over several cloud services. I will get Apple’s iCloud Drive, as it’s going to be called, because it’ll just be here on my Macs and iOS. Maybe I can fold some things into that.

But isn’t the cloud supposed to make all this stuff transparently easy? If you’re in or you like the Microsoft environment, maybe this new OneDrive offer does.

Official OneDrive site

⌘

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Here’s how well I know the story of the ⌘ symbol that has come to mean so much to Apple users – because we use it so very much – and to mean absolutely nothing to us – because we barely think about it. I used to have a white sweatshirt that had a ⌘ icon on it. Loved that.

Loved it so much I wonder where in the world it has gone. I do know where in the world I got it but unfortunately you can’t still get them. (But keep an eye on the website of Susan Kare, famous icon designer who didn’t design this one. She did pick it, though, and that’s the story of the ⌘:

Known sometimes as the St John’s Arms, it’s a knot-like heraldic symbol dating back in Scandinavia at least 1,500 years, where it was used to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. A picture stone discovered in a burial site in Havor, Gotland, prominently features the emblem and dates from 400-600 AD. It has also been found carved on everything from houses and cutlery to a pair of 1,000-year-old Finnish skis, promising protection and safe travel.

It’s still found today on maps and signs in northern and eastern Europe, representing places of historical interest. More famously, though, it lurks on the keyboard of almost every Apple computer ever made—and in Unicode slot 2318 for everyone else, under the designation “place of interest sign.”

What is Apple’s command key all about? – Tom Chatfield, Medium.com (13 April, year uncertain)

Read on at the full article – and if you find my sweatshirt, please let me know. Last seen in Paris, if that helps.

Weekend read: “Only Apple”

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Chiefly because I’ve been reading this and it’s the weekend, let’s have a Weekend Read. This is an interesting and chunky piece by John Gruber of Daring Fireball – I do just like the name – about where Apple stands today and specifically about one recurring issue. Apple head Tim Cook has apparently taken to repeating the phrase that “only Apple” can do various things that it’s doing.

Sounds like typical marketing guff to me. Apple uses words like “magical” a lot and everything is “incredible” so I do rather tune that stuff out. But Gruber argues that there is a point, that there actually are things only Apple can do at the moment.

It’s all to do with how Apple controls its own hardware and software so it really controls the entire experience of getting and using its stuff. If something doesn’t work, it’s Apple’s fault. If something works brilliantly, it’s Apple’s fault. The suggestion, especially from Cook, is that there is simply no other company that is doing this on this scale and with this success.

Is this true, though? Is Apple the only company that can do this? I think it’s inarguable that they’re the only company that is doing it, but Cook is saying they’re the only company that can.

I’ve been thinking about this for two weeks. Who else is even a maybe? I’d say it’s a short list: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Samsung. And I’d divide that short list into halves — the close maybes (Microsoft and Google) and the not-so-close maybes (Amazon and Samsung).

Only Apple – John Gruber, Daring Fireball (13 June 2014)

Read the full piece for a careful, weighed examination of whether Apple is really different to those – and why it’s important.

Google’s new design ethos

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Previously… I told you about Apple’s long-standing Human Interface Guidelines that I read first as a paperback book in the 1990s but is now a free iBook. I just find the intense thought and detail fascinating, the care and the thought. Take a look at me enthusing and then get the iBook too.

Now Google has something in the same ilk. I’m telling you this moments after learning about it so I don’t yet know how interesting it is. But one of the key reasons I don’t use the free Google Docs is how clunky it is. I do change my mind every time I see that price, but still, it’s just not a pleasant experience and I would be facing that unpleasant design for 12-15 hours a day if I used it.

So I am very interested in what design improvements Google has been doing. If you are too, take a look right here.

Productivity can go wrong in the biggest companies

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When you or I fail to do something, it can be pretty bad but it is unlikely to have a visible impact on millions of people. You know where this is headed.

Apple never reveals its plans ahead of announcing them, but a fairly detailed report published prior to the conference from 9to5Mac laid out what it claimed was Apple’s map news.

Key changes included enhanced, “more reliable” data; more points of interest and better labels to make certain locations like airports, highways and parks easier to find; a cleaner maps interface; and public transit directions — that is, providing people with data about nearby buses, subways and trains. Further ahead, the report noted plans to integrate augmented reality features to give people images of what was nearby.

Why didn’t they appear? One tipster says it was a personnel issue: “Many developers left the company, no map improvements planned for iOS 8 release were finished in time. Mostly it was failure of project managers and engineering project managers, tasks were very badly planned, developers had to switch multiple times from project to project.”

It’s a take that is both contested and corroborated by our other source. “I would say that planning, project management and internal politics issues were a much more significant contributor to the failure to complete projects than developers leaving the group,” the source said.

Apple’s Maps are Still Lost – Techcrunch (9 June 2014)

I like Apple Maps: I find Google’s improved iPhone maps app a chore to work, though I too have been misdirected by Apple’s one.