Quick and Dirty Thoughts on the WWDC Keynote

Here are some quick and dirty thoughts I have on many of the announcements at Apple’s WWDC Keynote on Monday.

Apple TV

Disappointed we didn’t get any new features in tvOS. Maybe next year with the introduction of new Apple TV hardware. YAY for the announcement of an Amazon Prime app though.

watchOS

Not really impressed here. The main things I think Apple Watch struggles with are…

1. Access to audio controls

2. A more predictive, contextual, ability to show things on the watch face

As for 1, Apple did address this by making music controls a swipe away while running a workout in the Workout app. I was hoping for something a little bit more globally accessible. They accomplished 2 by introducing the Siri watch face. But for me, the Siri watch face is too much of a compromise because it can’t show any other complications on the screen at the same time.

I am also disappointed that they didn’t announce a Podcast app or Notes app.

macOS

No complaints here really. I wanted them to start the process of breaking iTunes down into smaller apps. Maybe at least breaking Apple Music into its own app and TV into its own app and leaving the rest of the things iTunes does inside the app known as iTunes. Really though, I am cool with Apple making slower and steadier updates to macOS. My Mac is the machine I depend on the most for work so I appreciate that Apple is focused on stability.

Hardware

The new iPads look great! I can see myself eventually buying the 10.5 size. I love my 12.9 inch for reading scores with the forScore app, but I really miss being able to hold it comfortably with one hand and also reading it in bed. Maybe the 10.5 inch will be the perfect compromise.

The iMac Pro looks fantastic. Its not a machine I am looking for right now though so I will just enjoy it from far away and appreciate that Apple still cares about the Mac and its professional users.

iOS Features for iPad

• Drag and drop: YES! Love it. Looks really well implemented too.

• Dock: YES! A great idea I did not expect.

• Files app: This is where I started to loose my mind. A native file browser with support for Google Drive and Dropbox is going to completely change the way I use my iPad! This might be my favorite announcement of the entire keynote.

• System wide markup. This is another one that is going to completely change the way I use my iPad.

• Notes app: Sooooo much good stuff here. In line drawing? AWESOME! Document scanner? AWESOME. Text searchable handwriting. YES! Bye Evernote.

… yeah. So this iPad stuff is going to be huge.

HomePod

Smart of Apple to position this device as competition against companies like Sonos instead of as competition for products like Google Home and Amazon Echo. The speaker ecosystem is something I really enjoy about having Sonos speakers but its lack of integration with my phone and music library is a constant hurdle. Something with good quality, that I can operate without using an extra app would be much more enjoyable. 

Will I buy one of these? It is really hard to see how this will play out. Amazon Echo and Sonos are working on some kind of integration. That could potentially keep me in that ecosystem, though the idea of selling the Sonos speakers and eventually replacing them with these Apple things has crossed my mind. It might be the kind of situation where I get one HomePod just to get a feel for it and then wait on additional purchases.

WWDC kicks off today!

It's WWDC keynote day. Christmas in June! (If you are a nerd like me) Tune in here  at 10 am PDT.

🔗 Bringing Apple HomeKit Support to Ring

As someone who has invested hundreds of dollars in home automation devices over the past two years, this news was exciting to me.

Bringing Apple HomeKit Support to Ring:

Some of you may have recognized a familiar name onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) earlier this week.

We’re excited to officially announce that HomeKit support is coming to Ring later this year, which means Ring neighbors will have an easy, secure and private way to monitor their home via the new Home app in iOS 10. We’re also adding Siri support, which gives you another great way to interact with your home and Ring products.

Unfortunately, it is one year later and the app is still not updated with HomeKit support. I am still looking forward to it though. The demo at WWDC last year depicted the Ring doorbell app sending “rich” notifications to the iPhone. Rather than launching the Ring app to see the video feed of who is at your door, the live video feed was embedded right into the notification. Pretty neat stuff.

🔗 Why Remix ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’? Giles Martin, The Man Behind The Project, Explains

Looking forward to catching up on my podcast queue this weekend with this one…

Why Remix ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’? Giles Martin, The Man Behind The Project, Explains

I have not had enough time to dig into the new Sgt. Peppper’s remaster but when I do, I am sure I will listen to the original multiple times through before digging into the new version.

🔗 Drumset = You

John Colpitts’s “Drumset = You” is a fun read. Having grown up with so many of these drum set method books, I admire his dedication to the small amounts of written text contained within them. Growing up, of course, I rarely read this material, having been in middle school and being very anxious to get to the playing music part.

Drumset = You by John Colpitts:

I’m a mostly untrained drummer. I’ve taken lessons for brief periods, but until recently I’d missed out on that most essential component of drum pedagogy: the method book. In my efforts to improve, I’ve been drawn to the introductions of these books, which feature efficient, often dull language—and in which, occasionally, the eccentricities of the authors shine through in remarkable ways. In the last few months, I’ve become obsessed with gleaning hints about drummers’ personalities from these books, far too many of which, perhaps unsurprisingly, have been written by men. Lost in the hinterland between art and technique, their introductions tend to exhibit grouchiness, pretension, narcissism, penury, New Age quirkiness, and sometimes even wisdom. What follows is a survey of some of the more striking entries.

🔗 New update to Dorico

New update to Dorico. Read about it at Scoring Notes here. See a preview video about it below.

I have been using Dorico since the fall and I love it more and more every day. I still need to boot up Sibelius every now and then, but I have mostly phased out of it.

🔗 You kids like the wrong music

Ethan Hein back at it again with a great post deciphering the idea that it doesn’t take musical ability to be a popular singer these days…

You kids like the wrong music, part two:

It’s true, we don’t expect unamplified and unedited singing at Caruso’s level anymore. But we expect a lot of other things. For one thing, we expect singers to write their own material, which Caruso didn’t do. For another, we demand a lot of studio technique that Caruso would have found unbearably alien. To say that “edited” recordings are of intrinsically lower musical value than live recordings makes no sense. By that standard, we should require that all movies be plays that are filmed in real time. Film acting isn’t the same craft as stage acting, and unamplified stage singing isn’t the same craft as studio singing. Some people manage to master both crafts, but not many.

So much great stuff here. Read the whole thing.

🔗 Joe Steel's Apple TV wish list for WWDC 2017

I love how passionate Joe Steel is about the Apple TV. Read his WWDC 2017 tvOS wish list here.

The ATV is my go to device at home. Despite its many flaws, I really enjoy mine. Steel echoes many of the features I included on my own WWDC 2017 wish list. 

Control your computer's data usage on the go with TripMode 2

If you tether your PC to the cellular connection of your phone or tablet while traveling, you might want to check out this app.

From David Sparks at Macsparky.com...

TripMode 2:

There’s a new version of TripMode out. I’ve written about TripMode before. It’s a Mac app that will monitor your internet traffic and selectively turn off apps. This can be a lifesaver when tethering. As a quick war story, I once had a very large podcast file come in over Dropbox while I was tethering my Mac and burned through a month’s wireless data in about an hour. With TripMode, when I tether, I turn off Dropbox so that doesn’t happen.

I have been looking for an app like this for a while. The idea of tethering my Mac to my iPad’s data connection while I am away from a reliable wireless network is appealing. I always worry about the data that my computer is hogging throughout the various processes that run in the background (things like Dropbox and photo app syncing). With TripMode, that is no longer a concern. You can download TripMode 2 here.

The not so death of MP3

You may have caught this headline last week:

The MP3 Is Officially Dead According To Its Creators

It is worth a read, but make sure you read Marco Arment’s followup:

“MP3 is dead” missed the real, much better story

In summary:

MP3 is supported by everything, everywhere, and is now patent-free. There has never been another audio format as widely supported as MP3, it’s good enough for almost anything, and now, over twenty years since it took the world by storm, it’s finally free.