For years, I’ve eschewed using the default iOS apps in favor of third-party offerings, because maaaan, I always knew better. Apple’s apps are for regular people, and I’m a PowerUser™, maaaan. I’d configure all kinds of workarounds and extra steps because I wanted to wring every last bit of functionality out of my devices, and the basic starter apps just weren’t ever enough.
Something’s changed though–well, two things–in the past few years. I’ve lost my taste for fiddling a little bit, and the default apps Apple ships with its devices have gotten, well, better. Better than other things I could use? Not in all cases. But better… enough. I’ve been increasingly focused on reducing friction in my life, and having a simpler computing experience that works together with its component parts–as much as any multi-device connected computing experience can work without hair-pulling these days.
Apple's apps have always gotten better with each iOS release, but I wonder if this year's additions – most of them featured under the Intelligence banner – will make me reconsider third-party apps I thought I'd never change again. It'll be interesting to check back once iOS 9 ships.
Apple may have named the next version of Mac OS X after El Capitan, but Google has tackled the 3,000-foot granite monolith in person. The search giant has added Yosemite Valley's El Capitan to its list of Street View conquests, partnering with legendary climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold, and Tommy Caldwell to capture mapping data thousands of feet up in the air.
For iPhone owners, all the docks in this roundup are fine choices, at least in terms of compatibility with many third-party iPhone cases. [...] In the end, though, Apple’s own iPhone Lightning Dock has the cleanest and simplest design, and that makes it my favorite of the bunch.
Transit App is a free Android and iOS app which helps out with a host of tools for planning journeys around and across your local city. The app covers around 100 metropolitan areas, including most North American cities, and a scattering in France, along with London, Rome, Milan, Berlin, Mexico City and Nairobi.
Apple is introducing a Safari View Controller on iOS 9. Created with the goal to let developers stop writing miniature web browsers, Safari View Controller enables apps to delegate the responsibility of showing web content to Safari itself, avoiding the need to write custom code for built-in browsers.
Swift 2 brings updated support for SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data). What exactly does that mean?
China has been the world's top smartphone market since 2011 but not everyone in the fast moving country can afford an expensive iPhone or similar such status symbol, an economic reality that Shanghai-based Omni Prime hopes to up-end.
Through its Paymax app, the start-up is offering small loans to blue collars in China who want to buy an Apple phone, Apple Watch, MacBook or another gadget from the California-based company’s ever-evolving catalogue.
There's no question that the expansion of the information technology industry has often come at the cost of the displacement of its neighbors --and while Silicon Valley might be its epicenter, tech-driven gentrification is by no means an issue confined to the Bay. But there are also fault lines within the tech industry itself, whose surface appearance often belies the depth of the conflicts, potential and actual.
The five-second rule won’t save you from germs and the blue whale isn’t actually the earth’s largest living organism.
*Round of applause for the Smithsonian* (via Reddit) pic.twitter.com/aBKiuvJK3u
— Ewa S-R (@EwaSR) June 24, 2015Thanks for reading.