512 Pixels

Federico Viticci:

For some Apple observers, it’d be easy – and justifiable – to argue that Apple is “done” with improving iOS given the software’s maturity and sprawling app ecosystem. With long-awaited technologies such as action extensions, widgets, custom keyboards, folders for iCloud, and external document providers finding their way to iPhones and iPads, iOS has seemingly reached a zenith of functionality, an ideal state with no low-hanging fruit left to lust for.

Except that iOS 8 wasn’t a culmination aimed at ending on a high note. As I wrote last September, the changes introduced with iOS 8 laid the foundation for a more flexible, customizable, and ultimately more powerful mobile OS that would pave the road for the next several years of iOS updates.

There’s always going to be new low-hanging fruit in iOS. And 2015 is no exception.

No one is better qualified to write this article. Every single point is right on the money.

Well, this is interesting:

Applebot is the web crawler for Apple, used by products including Siri and Spotlight Suggestions. It respects customary robots.txt rules and robots meta tags. It originates in the 17.0.0.0 net block.

User-agent strings will contain “Applebot” together with additional agent information. For example:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10 10 1) AppleWebKit/600.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.2 Safari/600.2.5 (Applebot/0.1)

If robots instructions don’t mention Applebot but do mention Googlebot, the Apple robot will follow Googlebot instructions.

“Will Apple get into search?” has been a question asked by company watchers for years. Now, it seems, the answer is yes, at least in some capacity. While the company is calling Applebot a “Web crawler” for Siri and Spotlight, it’s not hard to see this being part of a much bigger project.

(In fact, this has been going on for some time, which shouldn’t be suprising.)

My assumption is that Applebot will start as a new options — probably the default — for Siri and Spotlights results maybe as early as iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11. ¹

I don’t see Apple banishing Bing from these system-level utilities on the first go-round, though. If the fallout from Maps was bad, I can’t imagine how poorly bad or incomplete search results would be received.

Craig Hockenberry writes about the dumpster fire that is Apple’s new networking subsystem. If you’ve been having network issues, discoveryd is probably the root of the problem.

Bradley Chambers:

Couch to 5k apps are a dime a dozen. If you search the App Store, you’ll find tons of options. Some of the apps are well-maintained, and others are not. But, the goal remains the same: to get you off the couch and working towards a 3.1 mile run.

This may not sound like a lot, but for non-runners, 3.1 miles (in my opinion) is the magic distance where running goes from the worst thing ever to this is actually fun. These apps aren’t asked to do near as much as a general purpose running app, so they should be focused and easy to use. Run 5k is our favorite app due to its simple design, ease of use, and integration with Health.app. It’s free for a few workouts, and costs $4.99 to unlock the entire plan.

There have been two interesting Watch-releated links to make the rounds the last day or so:

Human Interface Guidelines »

Every major release of OS X and iOS has brought a revision to Apple’s HIG, and with Apple Watch, the company has spun off a new version of it just for the wearable.

Band Design Guidelines for Apple Watch »

Turns out, Apple is going to allow other companies to make Watch bands. This document is an interesting read, and be sure to check out the dimensional drawings for the two sizes of Watch.

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Sarah Perez at TechCrunch:

There aren’t a lot details being offered about the analytics service’s feature set at this time, but Apple says the service will offer developers the ability to track how often customers visit an app’s page on the App Store, find out how many users open the app over time, check on app and in-app purchase sales, create custom campaign links and follow the success of marketing campaigns, and understand which websites refer the most users.

First promised at WWDC nearly a year ago, this is welcome news. There is, however, this issue:

Look, Apple, we seriously need to talk about your icon game. This is just… can you not at least center the dial? pic.twitter.com/SO8NNphzcK

— Neven Mrgan (@mrgan) April 30, 2015

It cannot be unseen.

A fun app for a great cause. This one should be on your iPhone, folks.

This week’s show involves a lot of nose tapping:

This week, they boys break down Apple’s Q2 results and walk with Myke as he spends a day with Apple Watch.

Thanks to these three sponsors:

• Casper: Because everyone deserves a great night sleep. Get $50 off with the code ‘CONNECTED’
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A new conference coming in October:

You need more than technical chops to succeed as an independent developer. You need business sense as well. So this October, join some of the most experienced entrepreneurs and leaders in our community as they gather to talk about the business of iOS and Mac development.

Myke is speaking and we’ll both be there for the whole thing. I’m really looking forward to this.

With iOS and OS X on an annual release cycle, some Apple watchers have expressed a desire for a “Snow Leopard” moment this year.

But what does that phrase even mean? How does it apply today, six years after Mac OS X Snow Leopard was announced?

No New Features

Released in 2009, Mac OS X Snow Leopard will best be remembered by this slide at its announcement:

That “0 new features” slide doesn’t tell the whole story, however.

The fact that 10.6 was introduced by Bertrand Serlet says a lot. Here are the three major points he made on stage:

1. Snow Leopard was a better Leopard. The release was full of refinements and little touches.
2. 10.6 brought new under-the-hood technologies to the Mac that the platform relies on today.
3. Exchange support was added to the Mac with 10.6, after being added to iOS previously.

There is a sea of complexities under those three tentpoles. ¹ Serlet claimed that 90% of the projects within OS X were refined between 10.5 and 10.6. QuickTime X and Safari 4 shipped with the OS, and things like Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, and much more robust 64-bit support all shipped with Snow Leopard, as well, not to mention Exchange support, which was a big step forward for the Mac in enterprise environments.

All that said, however, Snow Leopard lacked the laundry list of new features that OS X customers had grown use to. In his review of 10.6, John Siracusa wrote:

This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a “time out?” I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Many of these same developers applauded the “150+ new features” in Tiger and the “300 new features” in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?

He continues:

The overall message from Apple to developers was something like this: “We’re adding a ton of new things to Mac OS X that will help you write better applications and make your existing code run faster, and we’re going to make sure that all this new stuff is rock-solid and as bug-free as possible. We’re not going to overextend ourselves adding a raft of new customer-facing, marketing-friendly features. Instead, we’re going to concentrate 100% on the things that affect you, the developers.”

Snow Leopard was heralded as a “love letter to Mac developers.” The phrase surfaced again last year, and was thrown around a lot after WWDC 2014, and for a long list of good reasons. Swift, third-party keyboards, Extensions, Touch ID APIs, better notifications, and more showed up with iOS 8.

The difference between iOS 8 and Snow Leopard is that the former brought many user-facing features, while the latter only really had one: Exchange support.

Busy Apple is Busy

With WWDC coming up, the annual topic of what Apple will highlight is back on my mind. Here’s a list of potential talking points, in no particular order:

• New Apple TV hardware
• Apple TV SDK
• New Apple TV service
• iOS 9 preview
• Music streaming service
• Native apps for Apple Watch
• Updated Mac hardware
• Mac OS X 10.11 preview

While it’s possible that all of these things will make it into the Keynote, it’s a whole hell of a lot of stuff to talk about.

Everything on that list is exciting, and with Apple on the hook for annual releases, chances are iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11 are just around the corner.

The problem is — of course — that Apple may be stretched too thin. Pundits have said that for years, and that bulleted list a few paragraphs up is a little frightening in that regard.

Tapping the Brakes

I don’t think the market will let Apple slow down on iOS; however, the space is competitive, and Android is looking better and better each year.

It’s interesting to think about what a Snow Leopard moment for iOS could look like. Apple could tidy up the new features in iOS 8, ² and polish the rough bits, turning iOS 8 into a mature mobile operating system, not a mere rung in the iOS ladder to the sky.

Likewise, I’d be fine with OS X slowing down a bit. While the yearly release cycle keeps things fresh — and in step with iOS, with features like Continuity — it feels like just about the time each version of OS X gets good and stable, a new version comes down the pipe.

Chances are, of course, that my dream of a slower 2015–2016 cycle won’t come true. The pragmatic thought is that some of this stuff will get a mention at WWDC, but Apple will follow up later in the year in more detail.

(My money is that this will be their approach for native Watch apps. The company has said WatchKit will be replaced with native apps later this year, so a mere mention at WWDC may be enough to hold the community over.)

This summer — like the past several — promises to be busy for those of us in the Apple space. I’d like a breather, but I don’t think we’re going to get much of one.

Apple:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 second quarter ended March 28, 2015. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $58 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $45.6 billion and net profit of $10.2 billion, or $1.66 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.8 percent compared to 39.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 69 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The growth was fueled by record second quarter sales of iPhone and Mac and all-time record performance of the App Store.

Don’t miss Federico Viticci’s excellent coverage, including this graph, which really stopped my in my tracks: