In case you aren’t aware, Marzipan is a program at Apple that is working to merge aspects of the iOS and macOS code bases over time, making life easier for developers. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman first reported on this initiative in late 2017 and Apple unveiled the beginnings of the program at the 2018 edition of WWDC. Right now, Marzipan is still in its infancy and has only been used by Apple internally to port a few iOS apps over to macOS Mojave.
As we close in on Apple’s next event, there are tons of stories bouncing around about the company’s future growth being in services. Right now, everything is centered around their coming subscription services in video and news, but a smaller story from earlier this week points to another service that could dwarf all others. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple and Goldman Sachs are getting ready to team up on a credit card.
I like the fact that Apple has taken a pro-privacy stance in recent years. Considering how the rest of the big tech giants treat users and their data, it is a positive to have some type of check against that power. However, I don’t have any illusions about what Apple is doing. It is very simple. They don’t need to monetize our data, while their primary competitors do, so their stance on privacy has nothing to do with any altruism on their part. It is a position of convenience. A bat they can swing at the high, hanging privacy fastball that companies like Facebook and Google hang right over the plate for them.
Apple has been both praised and criticized over their rigid standards for the App Store. Parents tend to appreciate knowing that porn and other indecent material will not be readily available via apps. The ones where it is able to be found can be restricted through parental settings, making parental control realistic and not too difficult for those who want to take advantage of it.
Today is the tenth birthday of Apple’s App Store, which is hard to believe. It makes me feel my age just a bit as I type this. On the one hand, it’s hard to remember the world of mobile devices and smartphones before it, because it is so much a part of everyday life today. On the other hand, I also remember the Summer of 2008 like it was yesterday.
In case you haven’t already heard, earlier this week Apple reversed an earlier approval of Steam’s Steam Link app for iOS and tvOS, and has now rejected it based on what was initially termed as “business conflicts with app guidelines.” Well, whoever in marketing or PR at Apple dropped that line should think before they speak, because most of the controversy surrounding this decision is based on that poorly-worded quote.
I have never engaged in substantive political discussion here on the site, and its not something I plan to make a habit of. I only bring this issue up now, since the current re-awakening of the gun control debate has curiously intersected with Apple in a way that I doubt they ever would have foreseen.
In case anyone either wonders or cares, here is my baseline- I am not a Republican or a Democrat. In fact, I absolutely loathe the modern incarnations of both mainline political parties and the weak and pathetic candidates they routinely trot out. If that offends you, then you should probably stop reading now, because I am not sorry for it. I am a card-carrying Libertarian, and I am a Conservative by the classic definition, not the strange and decidedly not Conservative Republican one.
As for guns, I will say this for the record. I am a lifelong gun owner and shooter. I have hunted with my Dad since I was a kid. I received a lot of valuable instruction on how to handle and respect firearms while I was young, so I know what they are capable of and handle and use them accordingly. I still own many guns, but none of them are what you would call “assault weapons.” I am not an NRA member because I don’t approve of their use of fear tactics to hold a hard and unrealistic line on gun control.
If you’ve been reading this site over the last year, you may have come across one of my many rants on the Apple TV. It’s a platform that I used to love. A device I thought had so much promise just a few years ago. I was excited to get one back in late 2015, when Tim Cook told us “The future of TV is apps.” I thought that, at long last, Apple had finally taken the next step with their television platform.
While in-app purchases turned into dopamine-powered cash registers and Candy Crush knock-offs have dominated the App Store gaming scene in recent years, there are occasionally exceptions that show what is possible on the iOS platform and potentially what could haven been the norm. GRID Autosport from Feral Interactive (actually from CodeMasters originally, but ported to iOS by Feral), which was released for the iPhone and iPad a few weeks ago, is one such a example.
So who here is still playing games on their iPhones or iPads? Maybe I’m just jaded and cynical thanks to the once-bright gaming future that Apple never quite delivered on. While I can understand that many may disagree with me, it is hard to ignore how different things are at the moment in comparison with the salad days of 2009-2012, when apps were all the mainstream rage and games were at the heart of it all.
I’ve been using iOS 11 on my iPad Pro since I got my new 12.9” model, but I held off installing it on my iPhone until last week. I absolutely rely on my phone when I am in the field at work, and couldn’t afford outages, crashes, or widespread app incompatibility. I waited until I was sure that none of those issues would drag me down, and I’m glad that I did. I’ve had a good experience with 11 on my phone, so far.
iOS 11 is a far bigger and more wide-reaching upgrade on the iPad than the iPhone, so not too much jumped out at me at first beyond the new Control Center. However, once I started using it, the App Store quickly became the most notable difference for me between iOS 10 and 11 on the small screen. While I had looked through the App Store a bit on my iPad and updated my apps, I really didn’t notice how big a difference the new design made until I started using it on the iPhone, with its single-column layout.