The Apple Sheep

Around this time last year I wrote the  iOS 12 wish list , And to my surprise most of my prayers were answered, and iOS 12 has been wonderful for the last 5 months or so. But now we're coming up on another WWDC, Yes its still 5 months away but that hasn't stopped the rumour mill from speculating what the next version of iOS will be.Here are a few features that I'd like to see on the next version of iOS. A New Look For iOS 13 Ever since iOS 7 iOS has looked the same more or less, With its flat icons and punchy colours. I feel that the time for a refresh is long overdue. Don't get me wrong it looks great but, Its stale and I fresh new coat of paint can go wonders in making iOS 13 feel radically different. Apple has their work cut out for them if they do decide to go down this route. Finding a new design aesthetic isn't the most easiest thing in the world. Wh...

Its no secret that Apple has had a hard past few months, With iPhone sales on stagnating and a handful of lawsuits, Its safe to say that Apple has seen better days. Apple in it's defence has tried to boost iPhone sales over the past few months, from offering  heavy discounts to for the iPhone XR. But the era of yearly smartphone upgrades are over. No more can you expect customers to pony up egregious amounts of money on a yearly basis. The smartphone in general has become a tool, Most people need it to do maybe 5-6 basic tasks and if a phone does that well they're happy with it. Compounding the problem Apple makes really good products, Their phones last a long time, The iPhone 6 or 6s can still be your daily driver in 2019 no issues, Like I said they do the job that most people want them to do. So its no surprise that people are holding onto their phones for a much longer time  tha...

iOS has long been guilty of being terrible with files, You had third party file managers that promised to give you a great files experience. But most of them fell pitifully short, some did almost come close to being good but none came close to the flexibility and power that a file explorer on Android, Windows or MacOS could ever hope to give you.That all changed with the introduction of the files app on iOS 11. Why Bother With A Files App? Apple has been talking about  replacing the PC with an iPad for quite a while now and to truly replace a PC you need a few desktop features on iOS which is primarily a mobile OS. Ask anyone and they'll tell you that the ability to manipulate files is one of the most basic things that you'd expect a computer to do. After all one of the first GUI apps was a file explorer. So it makes sense to bring over the file explorer to iOS. But you just can't port finder over...

It's that time of the year the new iPhones have dropped and our subscription boxes have been filled with reviews, camera comparisons and a whole host of other tech related videos. One of the genres of tech videos that I enjoy the most is the real world speed test in which two of the hottest new phones are pitted against each other. With them having to blaze through the same set of apps that you might expect the average Joe to sue over the course of his day. After all seeing how a phone handles the apps that you use almost daily would be a great way of telling how fast and responsive it is? Thats the intuitive answer it feels right but unfortunately thats not the case. Speed Tests Are Inherently Flawed   The problems with the so called "Real World" test beings with the very moniker itself. How do you define the phrase "Real World Test"? There is ...

When it comes to iOS 12 the promised performance improvements has been one of the biggest reasons for people to upgrade from iOS 11. With the mess that  iOS 11 was for some users, iOS 12 has been a breath of fresh air. But there has been one feature that more or less flew under the radar but has proven itself to be immensely useful. Siri Shortcuts On  iOS 12 Now if you don't know what Siri Shortcuts are then you'd find yourself much more at home here . Now that you're in the know lets get on with the show. The first aspect of Siri Shortcuts that I am fascinated by is how polished it is for a generation one product. Remember this is like the 2011 Siri or the 2016 version of portrait mode. Back when they both came out they were more gimmicky than of actual value. But with time they have grown into the useful products that they are today(Yes even you Siri). The app i...

One of the great joys of owning an iPhone are the software updates. They can give your ageing phone new skills, they make your phone more secure and it just looks a lot more different than what it used to in most cases. Software for the most part is great but often times it often requires third party developers putting in massive amounts of time to redesign their apps for the new OS. When iOS 11 dropped Apple made it mandatory for all app developers to support the new iPhone X display on their apps. The same thing happened when the iPhone 5 debuted, Developers had to redesign their apps to run on a 4 inch display. This has often been time consuming, In fact the success of most of what Apple does depends on how much third parties have adopted it. Just imagine what the touchbar could have been had third parties actively redesigned their apps to support it. More oft...

Ever since iOS 9, Apple has been pushing iPads as PC replacements and back in the day the software just wasn't to par that the iPad pros shipped with. For all intents and purposes iOS on the iPad was just a blown up version of iOS on the iPhone. Therefore iOS on the iPad had pretty much the same flaws that th iPhone suffered from, the lack of multitasking and the lack of pro apps. The iPad in the days of iOS 9 was still more iPad than computer. Then with the release of iOS 11 the entire iPad lineup got some much needed impetus to make them actual productivity machines. Now you had an actual file explorer where you could keep and retrieve files from. Just the addition of the file explorer was a revelation in its own little way. But iOS 11 turned the iPad into something that you could decently multitask on. I mean you could run four ap...

Siri, Ah the dunce of the AI class, the butt of many a joke. Siri, over the past few years has got the reputation of being the dumbest smart assistants around. Sure Siri was the first to the game but over the years Siri has ceded ground to the Google assistant and Alexa. Since that day we've been begging for a massive Siri overhaul and so far we haven't gotten it...or have we? Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew With each WWDC we hope that Apple will work its magic and bring Siri back into the forefront but lo and behold that never happened. Apple here is playing catch-up, but they're playing it carefully. Sure they could put out this massive update that promises to fix Siri, but it could just as easily break it. When tech companies try to do too much at one go the end result is usually a dumpster fire. Remember iOS 11 , The Windows Phone or the  Android Tablet? All...

With our phones heading for that inevitable 100% screen to body ratio, our phones are undoubtedly more attractive but there has been unintentional fallout.All our phones are starting to look the same, admittedly a big reason as to why most of the phones today look the same is that they're trying to rip off the iPhone X. But eventually when the true full screen phone hits the metaphorical shelves, you won't be able to tell one flag ship from another. You can already see this starting to happen, in attempt to differentiate phone manufacturers have started experimenting with the backs of phones to make them more noticeable. You have Xiaomi with its fake internal circuit board look on the Mi8, Huawei with its new tangy colours on the P20 Pro and of-course  the Google Pixel line up with their semi glass back. But making the backs of phones really unique doesn't mean that you'll stick out. After all you s...

As long as there have been computers there have been computer games, That trend still holds true today despite the drastic change in the way we compute. From Pinball and Minesweeper that came with the windows installations decades ago, to the handheld Gameboys that most of us spent entire evenings on computer games have always stuck around. Since the advent of the smartphone game developers have done the sensible thing and ported games over to the mobile operating systems, Namely Android and iOS(Sorry Windows). Of late we've seen a trend towards ultra powerful phones marketed as gaming phones and I fail to see how that makes sense!. Lets Take A Trip Down Memory Lane Historically gaming has occupied two main platform, The Gaming PC market and the Console Market. Each makes sense in their own individual market. When looking at the PC market you have to look at what kind of PCs are on the market. You have underpowered min...

Every year, almost like clock-work after every iPhone keynote or a WWDC we see a lot of memes and posts which go something like "Androids had these features for years welcome to *insert year here*", and sometimes they're right. iOS has lagged behind in features on a few occasions ( and so has Android on just as many occasions ). This year we've seen the " Androids had this for years" argument has been brought up with the Photos App (You can read about why I think that, that is not a fair comparison here ) and Two Factor Authentication among other things. Two Factor Authentication This year Two Factor Authentication has been accused by a lot for being blatantly copied from Android. You're not wrong on the surface it looks really similar.  Let's take a look into how Android manages two factor Authentication. Imagine you're trying to install an app like WhatsApp. WhatsApp will sen...

So WWDC has come and gone ( Not really WWDC runs from the 4th of June all the way to the 8th). But the one mega-keynote we were all excited for is over! Trust me I am excited about iOS 12 and MacOS Mojave, which I will talk about all in good time but I think its time we took a good hard look at Apple's AI game. The Apple Photos App For the past few years Google and Facebook have been running circles around Apple when it comes to AI. Sure pick your favourite reason as to why Apple's AI has sucked for so long, from the internal power struggles to Apples own stance on privacy. But the winds of change are upon us! Sure Siri probably still cant tell you how much a chipmunk weighs, but Apple has made some headway in certain areas of AI. As I was watching the keynote, It struck me that the new Apple photos app felt really familiar. It groups faces you know and it has sharing suggestions, asking you if you want to share the photos you took with someone in the picture that ...

One of Apple's core offerings is iMessage, its the glue that keeps some iPhone user's glued to their iPhones. iMessage as we all know is that familiar blue bubble which lets us send texts to other Apple users. iMessage was introduced in 2011 and has since then exploded in popularity with iMessage handling about 40 billion messages in a day in 2014  up from about 2 billion in January of 2013 Now thats an interesting statistic. Why Do I Like iMessage So Much? Back in the pre iOS 10 days I loved iMessage for its simplicity, it was reliable clean and it wasn't clunky  like the Facebook messenger app. Another reason why I loved I message was cause of how minimalist it was, it was like a classier Kik counterpart. You see my main gripe with apps like Facebook messenger and WhatsApp  is that they show that you're online when you open the app. Sure some of you might like that and might even consider that as a feature but I just see it as a nuisance. As of late WhatsApp...

You probably read that title and just went, What? and then proceeded to re-read the title. Apple? Cheap products? Yeah right. Most people might scoff at the idea of Apple being a budget company, I mean who can blame poor average Joe who thinks that? Apple came out with a phone that literally costs a thousand dollars. So Apple wouldn't be high up on your list of affordable tech companies. But yet we see a growing list of products from Apple that doesn't break the bank. Why is this? What Are These Cheap Products? A few years ago you'd be hard pressed to find a few good Apple products.But over the last few years Apple has diversified it's lineup. Starting with the iPhone SE, A relatively upto date iPhone with great storage starting at $349. More over Apple is rumoured to bring out a new iPhone SE with upgraded internals and art the same price point.  Apple didn't stop at that they went further they surprised everyone in 2017 with a $330 iPad that was at it'...

In any iOS vs Android debate the point that iOS is restrictive will be brought up. It is a certainty, People will argue that iOS's restrictiveness is a negative and that it is whats holding iOS back. But why is iOS so restrictive why is iOS the way it is. Would we be better off with an iOS that lets us customise to our hearts content? Apple Is A Control Freak Apple is quite insistent on having absolute control over all the facets of its product starting with the software all the way down tot he hardware. This is both good and bad as you've probably guessed this doesn't leave a lot of room for customisation. But on the positive side this does allow for much better software support and an overall better experience. Let me put it this way a few weeks back me and my classmates were working on a deep learning algorithm ( real deep stuff) and I was rocking a MacBook Air while others were rocking similarly speced windows/ ubuntu laptops. Albeit with newer i5 processors. Much...

With the iPhone X out of the way we're now starting to focus on the iPhone X+ or whatever it will be called. With the iPhone X they couldn't really afford to come out with two new phones in 2017 as components such as FaceID and the whole manufacturing process was very constrained as it was a brand new design. But a year later Apple seems to have got a handle on things and seeing the great sales of the iPhone X, Apple seems to be ready to spread their wings into the + market. Why Differentiate At All? The iPhone X has been selling really well despite the rumours that state the contrary. A 6.5 inch plus model iPhone can really go a long way in keeping the lineup fresh and exciting. Just look at the Galaxy S8 and S9. Though great phones they lacked they didn't bring anything new and fresh to the table. Apple is in a unique advantageous position to bring something new to the table with the rumoured iPhone X+ .  Since the iPhone 7 people have flocked to the larger v...

iOS 11 really sent iOS off in a new direction and iOS 12 will be looking to improve on that. Still we found iOS 11 to be lacking in many ways and with WWDC around the corner well sort of I think it's time we take stock of what we'd like to see in Apple's next iteration of iOS, iOS 12. Notification Management! As far as I can remember notifications have been a mess on iOS. Sure the iOS way of notifications work if you have a limited number of apps, but as soon as you have a substantial amount of apps or you enter a really active group chat all that changes. You're notification screen becomes just becomes an unmanageable mess. With pages and pages of notifications. Frankly I'm surprised that Apple hasn't fixed this already. At this point I really don't care if iOS rips off the Android way of notifications but something needs to be done about them notifications. Wifi And Bluetooth Controls In Control Centre     Starting with iOS 11 you weren...

We're barely into 2018 and iOS 11 has been a dumspter-fire , But we're already hearing rumours about iOS 12 and the rumours say that iOS 12 will have a primary focus on quality and not new features. Which brings us to the iPhone 5s. iPhone 5s Backstory The iPhone 5s came out all the way back in 2013 and at the time it was considered to be the phone of the future and it truly was the 5s was the first phone with a 64 bit processor and at first apps couldn't fully utilise it's power this was or should I say is one powerful phone. But the mark of time and the advancement of software has left it's mark on the iPhone 5s, but nowhere is it near obsolete the hardware is surprisingly snappy and usable for a phone that came out in 2013. You can by all means still use the 5s as your daily driver to this day if you so chose. Calls and texting are fine it doesn't break a sweat even with some light multitasking, the camera is usable. Very impressive for a 5 year old p...