iOS 9 & OS X 10.11 to bring ‘quality’ focus

For the first time in several years, Apple is changing up its annual iOS and OS X upgrade cycle by limiting new feature additions in favor of a “big focus on quality,” according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s operating system development plans. We first reported in February that iOS 9, codenamed “Monarch,” would heavily feature under-the-hood optimizations, and we’ve now learned that Apple is taking the same approach with OS X 10.11, codenamed “Gala.” Sources have revealed additional new details on how Apple will optimize the new operating systems for improved stability and performance, add several new security features, and make important changes to its Swift programming tools for developers…

According to sources within Apple’s software development departments, Apple engineers have been pushing executives for a Snow Leopard-style stability focus in 2015, following numerous bugs that clouded the launches of both iOS and OS X. Apple directors reportedly opposed a complete pause on new features, but agreed to focus on quality assurance by holding back some features that were initially planned for the latest operating system launches. One source explained, “I wouldn’t say there’s nothing new for consumers, but the feature lists are more stripped down than the initial plans called for.”

9to5Mac

Quality doesn’t just appear out of thin air because some Apple directors have “ordered it” to do so. It appears when engineers/developers are given time to do it reliably, with focus, and without being always on a perennial treadmill between iOS releases, OS X releases and the god damned September “new iPhone” release!

The fact is that both OS X and iOS will continue to degrade while this yearly update insanity and pairing of iOS and OSX releases with the new iPhone release continues. OS X doesn’t required a yearly upgrade and it has been effectively hurt by doing so. QUality has decreased, stability has decreased, reliability has decreased. What exactly do I need new features in iOS and OS X if not one of them can be relied upon?

Mistake One

Now, Apple’s priorities have changed. Rather than make really great products that are mostly thin, they now make really thin products that are mostly great.

This concerns me more than you probably think it should. Not only does it represent compromised standards in areas I believe are important, but it suggests that they don’t have many better ideas to advance the products beyond making them thinner, and they’re willing to sacrifice anything to keep that going.

Marco Arment – Marco.org

Universal “despair” with Apple’s current products is increasing… And rightfully so. It’s a mess, it’s misguided and it’s much lower value than Apple previously offered.

Something needs to change at Cupertino.

NSFW: Microsoft doesn’t suck, and you don’t have to hate it

I have to admit that I’m pretty excited about some of the stuff Microsoft is working on these days. Every chance I’ve had to use Microsoft Office 2016, I’ve been impressed with how well it works. It’s available as a preview version that can be installed alongside Office 2011 if necessary.

I’ve also been experimenting with Microsoft Windows 10 on my Mac, installed in a virtual machine environment, and I’m also quite impressed with how much better that is than Windows 8.1. Two of my kids use Windows Phones and like them a lot, although they wish their choices of apps were more robust.

Turning your back on Microsoft is fine when you have alternatives that work for you. But many of us live in a world where we have to cooperate with people who still depend on using Microsoft products to get their work done. So being familiar with and continuing to use Microsoft products is ok, really. They’re improving. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is moving the company in a good direction.

Look, it’s all right not to like Microsoft. You’re better off investing your enmity in other things not to like, though — like cancer, typhoons, or people who are mean to animals. Hating a company — Microsoft, Google, Apple, or whichever — is just dumb.

Peter Cohen – iMore

Is Apple Trying to Do too Much Too Quickly?

The problem is that, now, iOS and OS X are inextricably linked. A number of iOS features aren’t available, at least not fully, because OS X 10.10 Yosemite isn’t out yet. Being married to a release cycle based on hardware, not software, makes sense for iOS – certain features of the mobile operating system depend on new hardware features in iPhone and iPads – but it makes less sense with OS X, which does not have an annual hardware update cycle.

Yes, something has to give. Apple is great at showing us how wonderful our world will be with new products, but they’ve been less successful lately at delivering on their promises. It’s time for Apple to take a step back, slow down, and get things right, instead of just getting things shipped.

Kirk McElhearn

I’ve had more bugs and crashes and malfunctions in the last 6 months than in the last 6 years. It has come to that perilous place where I’m on Apple’s software not because I believe it to be the best/more reliable software, but because, mainly there’s no alternative.

This phrasing: “the best” vs “there’s no alternative” might sound the same to you, but believe me, it’s not. In one, I truly believe it to be the best OS available and on where I can rely and trust. On the other, I’m just “killing time” till an alternative shows up. And I’m actively looking for it, while before, you couldn’t even persuade me there was an alternative…

If Apple continues with this decay, the market is ripe for some disruption. Anxiously waiting for some other contenders.

Google Plus helping out

Gplus

A family member sent a couple of pics from a family event through Google Plus. (( i have no idea why! ))

Please notice the orang arrows i added and see how Google cares so much about you and doesn’t try to stick G+ down your throat… (( yeah, obvious sarcasm.))

I, being a reasonable techy savy guy, had to read the damn thing three times to realize where i should actually click to see the photos. I wonder if the numbers of members of G+ are actually rated the same as Facebook members by the marketeers and advertisers. At this moment it’s more a “number of persons who were conned into signing up” than actual “membership numbers”.

The end of the Facebook era

We can learn a lot from observing this transition of power. It goes to show that social products are just as mortal as the people who use them. They grow old and long for the youth they once had. They become set in their ways and burdened by their legacy. They are subject to the ebb and flow of cultural evolution and the fickleness of popular opinion.

What was cool in the 70s wasn’t cool in the 80s. What became cool in the 80s was no longer cool in the 90s. Social networks are susceptible to the same shift in trends and fashion that we’ve witnessed in society before our social lives extended into the digital world. This is why social networks, like Google+ (where I worked for one year), are struggling even more than Facebook to get a foothold in the future of social networking. They are betting on last year’s fashion – they’re fighting Facebook for the last available room on the Titanic when they should be looking at all of the other ships leaving the marina.

It wasn’t too long ago that we thought nothing could stop Facebook. That era has come to an end. There will always be room for new and exciting ways to share and connect with the people that matter in your life.

Chrys Bader

Google Plus is specially struggling ’cause they’re actively forcing people to become a member instead of letting it grow on its own merits. That fact that they don’t succeed in in growing by its own merits is simply explained by the fact that they have absolutely no merit whatsoever.

By trying too hard to be a replica of Facebook, you essentially get the same product in different packaging. And if there isn’t any specific advantage why would I change? Sure, G+ had ‘circles’ but that’s not an ‘advantage’ in itself. it’s essentially a ‘feature’, easily replicated by FB in a couple of months. An advantage would be something different that FB couldn’t or didn’t want to replicate. Like for example anonymity.

It’s one of the main reasons why I use Twitter. I don’t particularly like the silly 140char limit. Nor the fact that everything is public by default. But for registering with it, I was asked two things: an email address and a username. Not my ‘real name’, not my job, not my Linkedin profile, not age nor anything. A mail and a username. It’s the exact same thing why other platforms such as Tumblr are a strong niche. Despite Mr. Zuckerberg talks about the ‘death of privacy’, people still expect some sort of privacy. They are okay sharing their nude bodies or intimate thoughts or silly interests, they just want to do it on their terms and in compartmentalised, relative anonymity.

Facebook started as a simple social network space and did this ok. At first the issue of the real name wasn’t even an issue. Then it was, but Facebook was still too insignificant to become an issue. Then it ended up not being ‘insignificant’ at all but it was already too ‘ingrained’.

Now G+ is created to contend this space and its first option is to enforce the real name policy not only on G+ but on every associated Goole service as Youtube! What exactly is the advantage of that to actual people using it? It’s no wonder why it’s failing, even as other smaller networks are actively growing and removing audience and content from Facebook.

I use this nickname of maccouch for a couple of years now. I have, however, other nicknames that i use since the beginning of the ‘interwebs’. They are a ‘person’ on itself, as valid and consistent id as my real name. I just don’t like to have it directly attached to me because i like that different aspects of my life remain separated. By trying too hard to enforce the ‘real name’ feature in order to create a better profile and sell more to advertisers they just end up making people retreat to the same ‘social strategies’ you employ on real life. Don’t tell anyone about your deep issues, don’t show that you’re in problem, share it only with your closest friends and family.

Now, if that’s the point, then why do we need the social networks again? Their advantage was that you could be talking about your issues with anyone else in the world. And/or share your taste of weird Japanese manga about fighting avocado fruits. And do it all without exposing or sharing too much of the other aspects of your life.

Copyright vs free speech

By curtailing the powers of the spy agencies, we could restore the internet to its original functionality and openness while maintaining the right to privacy and free speech – but maintaining a 20th-century copyright/IP model at the same time is impossible. Or we could give up our privacy and other civil rights to allow specific protected industries to carry on coining it in. A last option would be to switch off the internet. But that is not realistic: modern countries could not survive a day without the internet, any more than they could function without electricity.

As a society, we’re going through the painful realization that we can only have two out of the three options. Different corporatist interest groups would no doubt make different choices but, along with the vast majority of the people, I opt for the internet and privacy as both a free channel for communication and the free transfer of useful information.

Like any social change (the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage), this is also accompanied by heated arguments, legal threats and repression, and lobbyist propaganda. But historically, all this sound and fury will signify…precisely nothing. Maybe at some point, basic civil rights will make a comeback, upheld by the legislature and protected by law enforcement.

The choice is simple: internet, privacy, copyright. We can only choose two, and I know which I choose.

Annie Machon — RT Op-Edge

Facetime

I really like the way FaceTime was put together, much more than Skype or other video chat alternatives; specially for one factor: the lack of an ‘online status’!

Yes, many people have complained about this ‘missing feature’, but for me it’s, in fact, not a bug but a feature! I hate having the ‘always seeing eye’ that an online status puts on you. When you reach the office and you turn on Skype, everyone on your contact list knows that you reached the office. When you turn it down to go to lunch, everyone knows that you have gone to lunch. If you are late or early or simply not in the mood, your options are simply to go offline, in which case no one can contact you, or invisible, in which case no one knows that they can contact you, or put the ‘busy’ flag which in work hours is basically redundant and ignored.

FaceTime avoids this by basically being the equivalent of a phone. People don’t know when your phone is on or off, or ‘busy’. They simply call you. If you want to answer, you do. If you don’ want to answer, you don’t. That’s it. No pesky ‘online status’, no “why don’t you answer me if i just saw you change your status”, no nothing. It’s, essentially, a video-phone system.

Of course, there’s some drawbacks to this, such as not being able to have ‘asynchronous’ conversations as you have in ‘chats’. But that is where Messages enters. There, you can just leave a text message, and I will get back to you when it’s convenient to me. And you have all the ‘online status’ paraphernalia.

I used to read some articles, back when Messages and FaceTime were put on OS X, about why were they two different systems/apps. Back then, not having or using neither, I couldn’t really understood this question or essentially why Apple had done it this way.

But now? Really, Apple, great idea! Just leave it like this. It’s a great way and a great software to work.

Now, if you could just opensource the FaceTime protocol as you promised…