I love my Apple devices, but as anyone who reads Red Escape knows I have my fair share of issues with Siri. As you can imagine, in my household we do not have a HomePod. I tried an Echo a couple of years ago and never looked back. Now I use multiple Echo devices, along with many skills, to control music, lights, smart plugs and even my Xbox.

This Has Happened Before

While while smart assistant needs are met by Alexa, I am not a Fire TV fan. I love the Apple TV interface and the hardware is pretty powerful. Also as an iOS developer, I can develop for the Apple TV. I know I haven’t yet, but the ability to do so is nice to have in my back pocket.

A little over a year ago on December 6th, 2017 Prime Video arrived on Apple TV. Supporting 4K HDR and the TV app, it brought together a service I enjoyed with a platform I loved. I can say that it substantially increased my enjoyment of the Apple TV. With series I wanted to watch like the Grand Tour, Jack Ryan, The Man in The High Castle and more, having Prime video integrated with the devices I use the most made them both more valuable to me.

Round Two

Fast forward 12 months and I have this exact problem again, but reversed. I have an Apple Music subscription, which I enjoy. However I find the HomePod, which is Apple’s speaker solution, to be limited. While the sound is great, Siri’s capabilities and dependence upon a single phone makes it unattractive to me. As I mentioned I much prefer the Amazon Echo, which is more independent and acts as conduit to all kinds of services and features. But not being able to stream music was frustrating. I had even thought, albeit briefly, about switching to Spotify to solve this problem, but as I mentioned I still prefer Apple Music. As of right now I must connect via Bluetooth to play Apple Music on my Echo.

Yesterday that changed – Apple Music is officially coming to the Amazon Echo.

I had dreamed of this integration, but honestly I never imagined it would happen. I even briefly flirted with the idea of buying a HomePod when they hit $250 during Black Friday sales. Ultimately I decided that even $100 off wasn’t a valuable proposition for a speaker that only played music (although it sounded great) and lacked so much on the smart assistant front. Thankfully Apple also decided that the revenue from potential Apple Music subscriptions outweighed the benefits of ...

Let me start off by saying I’m a daily CarPlay user. I’ve used several generic infotainment systems with the notable exception of Android Auto. So far in my experience, CarPlay is far and away the best system. It has definitely made me a safer driver and mostly removed the temptation to look at my phone. However, there are several areas where I feel it falls short, and one major philosophy that I believe Apple has wrong that is preventing it from truly solving the CarPlay problem.

First off, there is a dearth of apps for CarPlay. Apple has defined a few, very specific categories and all other apps are forbidden from running on CarPlay. Why you ask? I have no inside knowledge, but I believe Apple’s philosophy to be that texting, mapping and audio are enough. Nothing else should happen inside the car. That is admirable but also dangerously naive. The world is more complex than ever, whether Apple or I like it or not, and the fastest way to get people to pick up their phones while driving is to tell them that the one app they want to use can’t be controlled through CarPlay. Isn’t any app with a CarPlay UI a safer alternative than a driver interacting with their phone? I don’t think Skype video chats or streaming Youtube would make for safe driving apps (more on that in a minute) but at least allowing a Skype user to be in a call as an audio only participant or allowing the Youtube app to stream audio only would be marked improvements over people who are inevitably driving down the road, watching YouTube on their phone screens. I say open any app up to CarPlay and only disapprove an app who’s safety is worse than a person using their phone while driving.

I told you we’d be coming back to Youtube and here we are. This should be a slam dunk. You obviously don’t want people watching video while driving. What about the dad waiting for 45 minutes to pick his daughter up from soccer practice? What about two people sitting in a car, killing time, who want to take advantage of that large touchscreen? It turns out we solved this problem many years ago with in car DVD players. If you remember, they are supposed to be hooked up to your brake so that the unit will only allow DVD playback if the vehicle is in park. Heck, my current CarPlay enabled head unit will play videos from a USB stick as long as I am parked.

I propose an enhanced level of interactivity for apps called Parked Mode – which would allow a user to watch Youtu...

When the iPhone X was announced I was relieved. You see I always upgrade my iPhone every two years. Luckily last year was not my year, so I had some time to sort out my feelings about Face ID. I have always been a huge Touch ID fan and I frequently use my phone laying on my desk. Needless to say I was very nervous about this year’s iPhone lineup, which adopted Face ID across the line.

Let me preface this with an acknowledgement that I know some people had issues with Touch ID and for them Face ID was a drastic improvement. I’m attempting to convey my experiences, based on my particular use cases in this article.

I do like Face ID – in fact I really like it. When it works, it’s very convenient and flat out futuristic. Just looking at your phone and watching things unlock does have a very Apple-like “magic” quality to it. Overall it’s still not better than Touch ID though, and it all comes down to one simple metric – the failure rate is way too high.

That’s not to say it ruins the iPhone XS or is unusable. Quite the opposite, it’s a unique feature that even with its shortcomings is tolerable. However I just spent over $1,000 on a phone. The thought has occurred to me more than once that for a product with that price, is “tolerable” the best we can expect? I certainly hope not. Apple loves money, as we can see by their prices jumping across the board as of late. I feel like as Apple fans we tend to give the company a pass based on accumulated goodwill or warm memories of those moments where Apple innovation made our jaws hit the floor. I’ll come out and say it – the iPhone XS is a damn good phone. It’s a great phone. It feels super premium and ticks off a lot of boxes. It’s not however one of those products that makes your jaw hit the floor.

The first time Face ID works its impressive. You can’t help but smile at your phone. Then you’re sitting at your desk and tap the screen to wake your phone – but it can’t see you, which triggers the phone to ask for your passcode. “No problem, it’s a new phone and I probably did something wrong” you say. It happens a few more times during the day as you’re still getting used to the phone. That night you’re laying on your side and Face ID fails. Even though you’re playing the break-your-neck game to align your head with the Face ID camera it still doesn’t work – which means enter your passcode again. After a few days of this you come to realize that you’re not the on...

Is augmented reality really going to be as big as Tim Cook thinks it is? At WWDC last year it wowed the audience and had people in a frenzy. Fast forward a few months and the reception noticeably cooled after iOS 11 saw its public release. However, it received a shot in the arm this past week with the announcement of the latest version of AR Kit.

In a very un-Apple move, the company detailed what to expect in the upcoming iOS 11.3 update due out this Spring. One of the most important, and likely overlooked components, is AR Kit 1.5. While features like iMessage in iCloud or new Animoji will get users to upgrade, developers are poised to receive a far more functional version of AR Kit than what shipped in iOS 11.

That’s not to say anything bad about the AR Kit team – quite the opposite in fact. They have done a remarkable job in upping the quality of AR content and have done so in a relatively short amount of time.

The History of AR Kit

However, I’m sure the following story is all too familiar to many devs. When the iOS 11 betas were released, my first thought was “What can I do with AR?”. The demos were impressive and Tim Cook had repeatedly talked the tech up in the media. Once developers got their hands on the tech, the limits became more clear – and unfortunately they rendered my plans for AR Kit moot (and surely many other developers).

AR Kit 1.0 only supported horizontal planes, meaning the software could sense floors, tables and other flat surfaces. However it could only sense those surfaces – there was no vertical surface detection, so objects like walls were invisible to AR Kit.

In AR Kit 1.5 that has changed.

AR Kit – The Next Generation

While they didn’t bill this as version 2.0, it easily qualifies. The star of course in this 1.5 update is vertical surface detection – walls, doors and the like are now fair game. This will extend the capabilities of AR Kit exponentially, bringing a whole new generation of apps that were impossible previously.

Some other big improvements include an improved ability to map irregularly shaped surfaces like circular tables, a resolution bump from 720p to 1080p and support for auto-focus.

Interestingly, Apple also mentioned support for interactive detection of signs. Direct from the press release :

Using advanced computer vision techniques to find and recognize the posit...

To save it’s future, Apple decided to go back to the past and deliver some of the biggest features of the 80s to the iPad. In the process the iPad has been juiced up by features we take for granted on our Macs, but which will signal a tectonic shift on the tablet.

I think the overwhelming majority of developers were thrilled with many of the announcements made at WWDC last week. For iPad users and developers especially Apple made several major improvements in iOS11 that make the iPad a far more capable machine for productivity work.

The “Files” app which Apple previewed last Monday feels like a miniature Finder. That has been one of the top requested features for iOS year after year. Apple finally delivering some form of file management on the iPad also shows signs of the platform maturing. In addition to managing files and folders, the “Files” app also integrates with Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, Creative Cloud and more. Files and folders also support tags just like files on macOS.

The other big tentpole feature is “Drag and Drop”. Users can now highlight multiple items using a very convenient two handed “click and drag” gesture that feels very natural. The beauty of this feature is that it can be implemented in many ways. Springboard uses it for selections – meaning you can now move multiple icons to different home screens and folders. All apps benefit from image and text drag and drop in multitasking and of course, Files.app uses it for selecting multiple files. All said, it certainly feels like Apple has nailed a click-and-drag mechanic for touch screens.

Other, smaller features that are still worthy of mention include the new iPad keyboard, which now features roll down keys for symbols and numbers. This feature has potential to be the most unappreciated feature of iOS11 for iPad. If this allows users to type even 80% of time without having to switch keyboards the time savings would be immense. While the iOS keyboard is a marvel for being able to become anything, it suffers because it doesn’t have any tactile feedback, so the less you have to move your hands while typing on iPad the better.

Also worthy of mention is the new Control Center / Multitasking Viewer. On the iPad, users swipe up from the bottom of the screen all the way to the top. They are greeted by a very Mission Control-eqse view of the control center and all the running applications. It looks amazing and functions much easier than any...

If you are looking forward to the Nintendo Switch, which will be available March 3rd, you might want to skip this column. For anyone who has listened to Tabletop Life (our monthly podcast about tabletop gaming) you might have a clue about the tone of this article.

When Nintendo announced the NX, I had high hopes they would return to their former glory and build a system worthy of gamers’ time and money. What we received with the Switch was at best a misguided attempt to take on the iPad and at worst a clear reminder that Nintendo can no longer produce hardware without shooting itself in the foot.

Then and Now

The Wii U never really had a chance. It was a strange, incompatible system from the beginning and frankly the Wii U never really competed with Sony or Microsoft. The Wii U continued the classic Nintendo tradition of releasing new hardware with some strange, limiting feature that annoyed potential customers and made the system completely incompatible with the world around it. Nintendo systems are also generally very anemic compared to their brethren. For example, while Sony and Microsoft shipped systems with 500GB and 1TB hard drives for storing multiple downloaded games, Nintendo topped out at a meager 32GB.

The Failure of The Switch

The Switch is a solution in search of a problem. Nintendo has their dedicated handheld audience who purchase the 3DS system and games. However the casual gaming market has been taken over by smartphones and tablets and that isn’t going to change. If it had any chance of changing, Nintendo would certainly not be the ones doing it. Their proposition is to carry an additional tablet with you to play games for up to 3 hours. The success of the iPad and similar tablets came about by reducing the items people had to carry. Again, this is how Nintendo operates – they come up with an idea and then put on blinders to how ridiculous it truly is to the rest of the world.

The Switch will fail because it doesn’t know what it is. It’s either an oddly designed, incompatible tablet that has terrible battery life or it’s a weak, underpowered home console with terrible controls. Either way it’s overpriced and the game lineup looks absolutely dreary.

As someone who grew up with Nintendo games, I want to buy a new Nintendo system. I want to play new, HD versions of the games I grew up with. I want to challenge my friends t...

Before I begin a tirade, I want to make a few things clear. Being an Apple developer is great. I love the platforms and Apple’s dedication to continually improving them. They build awesome new features for us to implement in creative ways. I adore the user base who is willing to pay for quality software and help support people like me who enjoy developing apps. I enjoy the benefits of an ecosystem where reliability and dependability of the OS and hardware is an important feature. With all of these wonderful things, you would think Apple’s most important connection to developers and the health of their apps would be spectacular.

That connection to developers is iTunes Connect – and it is one of the worst apps I have ever used.

For reference, I am speaking of the abysmal iOS app; the website has it’s own odd quirks but it is, for the most part, useable. Apple only makes one in-house app that is targeted at developers. iTunes Connect is the place to check how your app is doing. It features important information for developers such as stats about downloads, updates and sales. It also is essential in letting you know when one of your app’s updates is under review or, in unexpected circumstances, rejected and for what reason.

Unfortunately, iTunes Connect seemingly gets worse with each update that it receives. If you read the reviews on the App Store, they are overwhelmingly 1 star. The app is riddled with bugs. Many developers rightly comment that if this were an app submitted to Apple for review it would most certainly be rejected. I’m going to condense the rest of this article in to my three main gripes with iTunes Connect. These are the unforgivable sins that have driven me to use App Annie, which is only marginally better.

1. 7D vs Week View / No 1D

For reference, previous versions of iTunes Connect had a 1D view, which was actually the default. The 1D or 1 Day view showed information from the previous day. It was because the reason 90% of developers open this app every morning is to check their sales from the previous day. In an update this summer, Apple switched the 1D totals to a rolling 7 day total. The tab still displayed 1D, so many developers were rightly worried about iTunes Connect giving them incorrect sales numbers.

To fix this, Apple updated the label to say 7D. Changing the label doesn’t fix the lack of functionality. I don’t recall there being a huge (...

Apple this week unveiled what it is calling Safari Technology Preview, which is a middle ground between public releases of the web browser and Webkit Nightly builds for developers.

Apple describes the preview browser by saying :
Safari Technology Preview gives you an early look at upcoming web technologies in OS X and iOS including the latest layout technologies, visual effects, and developer tools so you can provide input on how they are implemented and deliver a best-in-class user experience on all Apple devices.

Safari Technology Preview gives web developers a preview of improvements to Safari’s rendering engine, WebKit, along with developer tools like Responsive Design Mode built directly into Safari. The Technology Preview features the latest version of WebKit, along with a bug reporter to report issues.

The largest advantage compared to Webkit nightlies is Safari Technology Preview updates from the Mac App Store “every few weeks” according to Apple. It also runs side by side with the release version of Safari, for comparisons and testing new features without breaking your current code.

The Safari Technology Preview is available from the Apple Developer website now, for free.

As promised, Adobe has unleashed a preview of Project Comet, henceforth known as Adobe Experience Design (XD) CC. For now, the preview is OS X only, but a Windows 10 release is scheduled for the end of 2016.

It’s easy to like what you see – Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign can all be used for mockups in a pinch, but a program that can focus solely on that one task has lots of appeal. Sketch has made lots of inroads here on the Mac and has won many designers hearts. However, if Adobe can deliver a competent UX design tool that is bundled with Creative Cloud that is a compelling offer. Sketch would be in the unenviable position once held by QuarkXPress, who found themselves matched by a program designers were getting gratis when they bought Photoshop and Illustrator.

Quark REALLY drug their feet on adding new features and most importantly at the time – updating XPress to run natively on OS X. They were most certainly half responsible for their own demise. To Adobe’s credit they were also working on InDesign at a breakneck pace. The rest is history.

For those who’ve downloaded XD – what do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Apple has already shown off their new toys. Google was quick to follow. Microsoft went next. Now it’s Adobe’s turn, as Adobe MAX 2015 kicked off this week and brought with it a slew of product announcements and updates.

Adam at FStoppers has written a much more detailed look into Adobe’s announcements, which is well worth a read, but I wanted to hit a few high notes here.

Mobile – and more specifically the integration of mobile into your established workflow – seemed to be the tent pole of the MAX keynote. With some really great apps (like Paper by fiftythree) on the iPad, Adobe doesn’t have a stranglehold on the design app market. However, a compelling way to keep customers in the Adobe camp is to provide deeper integration with the desktop, where Adobe does have a stranglehold on the design app market. (Note: I’m aware of Affinity’s products on Mac and I’m going to learn more and write about them soon.)

They did just that too. Besides increasing their mobile app’s capabilities, Adobe has made it ludicrously easy to hop back and forth between tablet and desktop apps, letting each play to their strengths. This will get even better with the release of the iPad Pro next month and it’s super cool Apple Pencil. The drawing capabilities there will really make Adobe Sketch shine.

They also showed off some interesting updates on the desktop, including Photoshop with artboards, a faster Illustrator, Premiere with some neat color adjustments and an all new UX design app called Project Comet. That last one isn’t coming out until Spring 2016, but it looked very interesting.

I’m just going to go ahead and link to Jason Snell’s excellent El Cap review for Macworld, as it echoes many of my own thoughts. For designers / developers using a Mac, El Capitan will be a welcome update.

El Capitan (OSX 10.11) is all about refinement, sanding off the rough edges. Considering the breakneck pace Apple has been at with Mavericks and Yosemite, it’s nice to see them tidy up a bit.

I’ve been using El Cap for roughly a week now and I have exactly zero complaints about the new OS. There are so many nice little tweaks and improvements throughout the system that you’ll find yourself discovering new things for a while. The entire system just feels more responsive and snappier, and I fully expect that to continue and increase as more developers switch their GPU intensive apps to Metal.

You should, of course, always make sure all your essential apps have been updated or are compatible before you do an OS X upgrade and backup just in case. Don’t upgrade anything ultra mission critical right away either. Honestly though, once you’ve made sure your workflow is El-Cap Ready, go ahead and upgrade. If you’re already comfortable with Yosemite, there’s a lot to like here and the price is right.

If you are a Mac user then you have probably heard of Pixelmator. For those who haven’t, it’s a very capable image editor that compares well to Photoshop. Best of all, since it’s a Mac exclusive the app focuses on taking advantage of as many OS X technologies as possible.

Pixelmator 3.3 ScreenshotWith that being said, it’s a fantastic program and an amazing value. It’s also a little bit different than Photoshop. To help get you up to speed here is a link to some tutorials to get you up to full speed.

Link – http://www.pixelmator.com/tutorials/

With the growing popularity of eBooks, today we’re presenting a link on how to create an iBook for the iPad using InDesign CS5. Going direct to consumers with eBooks is a great way to publish your work without the cost and need to get a publishing deal. In a future post we’ll look at getting your eBooks on the Google Play store.

Link – Creating iBooks (ePubs) for the iPad

My first post has to be App Coda. When I started teaching myself Objective-C and learning how to make iOS apps, I learned the most from App Coda and Ray Wenderlich. App Coda is a 100% free site that the author walks you through step by step (in amazing detail for newbies) how to accomplish programming tasks in Xcode and MORE IMPORTANTLY why you are doing them.

The site has tutorials that cover a variety of topics. While they don’t cover everything the material they do have is solid gold. For anyone trying to get into iOS programming without much of a background I would recommend giving a few of their tutorials a read and immersing yourself in the material.

Link – App Coda Website

Welcome to Red Escape. This is a playground for designers. A place to discuss trends and thoughts. A place of inspiration that was born out of a need to nurture creativity without the need of profits or clients. A safe house for when the world drives us mad. That is Red Escape, and as any designer can see it’s still very new (less than 2 hours at this posting). So this is a journey we shall take together – growing, evolving, designing the site as we go. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

-mm