WWDC21 and Unity
One last Apple post before we return to photography—I’m currently working on a project with the new GFX 100S, so that’s a promise.
I took a few days to digest WWDC21. I still love this stuff. I enjoy deciphering which changes will impact the way I work and how. It’s like a puzzle to figure out, often by reading between the lines or looking at the fine print, once the dust has settled and the spotlight has moved away from the show’s glitziest demos.
There were many privacy and health-related announcements during the event, all important, and many of which will impact our daily lives—but I leave those to others. There were also questionable, slightly hyperbolic statements, but let’s gloss over that as well (1). Instead, here’s a roundup of what picked my interest.
Small yet Big
In the is there more to this category, we have Airplay to Mac. It’s a great—and much overdue—feature, but when visiting Monterey’s preview page, I noticed the following paragraph:
“You can also mirror or extend your display to pump up your productivity.” Wait… Extend? As in, the iPad gets a proper dual screen setup through Airplay? Mystery for now. The accompanying image just shows a Keynote setup, with the iPhone as presenter and the Mac delivering the full presentation—silly because that’s been possible for years, without Airplay. It also doesn’t fall under “productivity” in my book. Is there more to this? I haven’t read about any first-hand experiences with the feature so far.
Another addition of note to many of us here (and which wasn’t mentioned during the event): the new Photos app will finally allow viewing and editing of EXIF data. No more weird shortcuts or third-party solutions.
Grand Unified Theory
Would it be cheeky to say iOS 14 has at long last made it to the iPad? Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely ecstatic about widgets and other home screen changes to iPadOS. But I can’t help feeling these should’ve been part of a point update during the current OS cycle. I can’t remember such a drastic productivity split between iPad and iPhone than the one we experienced over the past year. We had two entirely different organizational paradigms, living side by side, on devices that are meant to be fully in sync.
But the ordeal is over: we’ve clearly reached The Year of Unity.
On his Six Colors website, Jason Snell writes the following:
There was a time when Apple rolled out the next versions of its operating systems and the story went like this: The iPhone and iPad added a bunch of new features, and the Mac got a few of its own and, if it was lucky, a subset of what the iPhone and iPad got.
To this, I would obviously add last year’s iPhone-only sub-subset.
But he goes on to echo my reaction to the WWDC21 keynote: it was like watching an ecosystem finally coalesce. This time, no device is left behind. As far as I can tell, every feature is, in some way at least, mirrored across platforms, with cross-communication becoming tighter than ever. For instance, the new Focus mode—essentially an ultra super-charged DND —immediately propagates to all synced devices. Which, I believe, is how Do Not Disturb always should’ve worked, right? If I’m unavailable on my iPhone, chances are I’m also unavailable on my Mac and iPad. No-brainer. (2)
The integration, however, goes much, MUCH deeper. If you’re a Mac and iPad user and haven’t seen the demonstration for Universal Control, go—like, now. This upcoming feature alone is life altering as far as I’m concerned. This is something my muscles still instinctively reach for, my brain anticipating it to work, only to be rudely awakened by reality. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the iPad next to my Mac and expected the mouse to just cross over (3). Now it will. And so will the keyboard. And we’ll DRAG AND DROP BETWEEN DEVICES TOO(!!). I apologize for shouting, but damn. I think I had a mild cardiac episode when that Procreate file dropped into an FCPX timeline.
Apple has always mastered the ability to create features that demo well… without necessarily passing the test of time. But when they truly tap into magic…boy can they deliver. I’m convinced Universal Control is the type of shift that is so fundamental, so natural, we’ll soon forget it once didn’t exist.
The integration trend also appears to extend to app features and new additions such as Quick Notes, Tab Groups etc, all available on all platforms (4). Plus: Shortcuts comes to the Mac. I know this is geeky territory, but it’s a massive deal. I was using Shortcuts on iOS when it was called Workflow, pre-Apple, and was the only way to bypass certain limitations in the system. Over time, it’s become more and more powerful, especially for the kind of basic, everyday automations most users are likely to find helpful. Things that are now, ironically, much more tedious to achieve on MacOS: the Automator app looks like a graveyard, full of obsolete junk that often just fails. Craig Federighi describing Shortcuts as “the future of automation on the Mac” was a much-needed shot in the arm. Applescript support, cross-compatibility with Automator…it’s all there.
Apple Silicon brings coherence to hardware—these new OSs deliver the same to the ecosystem.
Outlier
The one head scratcher for me, however, remains iPadOS. It gets all the new iOS 15 features and I can’t wait to get my hands on the software. But I saw nothing justifying an upgrade to the M1-powered iPad Pro— which…thank you, I guess?
I’m surprised. Frankly, I expected the iPad to be a much bigger deal this year. Maybe it’s a pandemic thing? Maybe Apple had to choose how to allocate their resources, and we’ll see something later. But at this point, I think Apple needs their own pro software on the iPad: Logic, FCPX, Xcode. They can’t just leave it to others. Swift Playground looks great but it’s another “lite” app isn’t it? As much as I love my iPad Pro (and I do), all that power is mostly overkill, almost unnecessary. It results in an incredibly fluid experience, but part of it seems wasted: in 2021, my 2018 iPad Pro still over-delivers.
I won’t complain: longevity in technology is refreshing. But I’d love to see the iPad’s true potential finally unleashed.
…………………
I cringed when the App Store was hailed as a secure haven where every app has been fully vetted.
David Sparks has a hands-on look at this feature and it’s a lot deeper than I initially thought. Actually, it’s what I hoped it would be and it opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of focused (ha) workflows.
Using Sidecar for a couple of months didn’t help.
Although so far, I find Quick Notes confusing: the notes appear contextually in individual apps or webpages? I know they’re all in the Notes app as well. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.
