Category Archives: macOS

Week 98 QotW – WWDC 2017

This is our annual deep-dive episode on announcements from Apple’s WWDC developer conference. We handle the news from today’s keynote in more or less chronological order:

  • Introduction, tvOS, watchOS
  • macOS and new Mac hardware
  • iOS and iPad
  • HomePod.

We discuss each of the announcements and share our thoughts and what we think the implications and prospects are for the products announced.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach the individual hosts on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast. And we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice.

Episode 52 – Differential Privacy, macOS Sierra Reviews, iPhone 7 Reports

We returned to our usual format this week, kicking things off with a News Roundup, and including a Question of the Week and Weekly Pick.

Our News Roundup covered three topics: Instagram’s release of user numbers, including 500 million monthly active users and 300 million daily active users; Tencent’s acquisition of a majority stake in Supercell for $8.6 billion; and BlackBerry’s earnings.

Our Question of the Week is: “How can differential privacy make my life better?” Aaron did a bunch of homework on this concept, which Apple introduced to many of us at WWDC last week but has actually been around for much longer. He tells us what differential privacy is, what some of the real-world applications are, and the benefits and limitations of this approach. We’ve included some links to some of Aaron’s reading material in the show notes.

Lastly, we discussed some other topics relating to WWDC which we didn’t get to last time or which have emerged since last week’s episodes, including the reviews of the macOS Sierra release which came out this week, and reports from the Wall Street Journal that Apple’s next iPhone will largely stick to the iPhone 6 and 6s form factor while ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack. We wrapped up the episode with our Weekly Pick, this week a recommendation from Jan.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Episode 51 – Themes from WWDC 2016

This episode is entirely devoted to covering the 2016 edition of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which we previewed last week. Rather than go through chronologically, as we often do with these episodes, or even by product/platform, we felt it might be more interesting to pick up on four big themes from this event and discuss those, incorporating a lot of the biggest announcements in the process. The four themes are:

  • Openness, or loosening the reins – which includes the new Siri, iMessage, and Maps extensions; making Apple’s apps deletable; and the new lock-screen UI for VoIP apps
  • AI and deep learning and pushing back against the narrative that Apple is behind – including advances in Siri, Photos, QuickType, and the concept of differential privacy
  • Things that should have happened sooner – or, as Aaron named this segment, “Finally” – watchOS 3 and its new app and dock model; single sign-on and the Remote app for tvOS; the Home app for setting up and controlling HomeKit devices; Siri on the Mac; the Apple Music redesign; and split-screen view for Safari tabs
  • Reinforcing the ecosystem – including Auto-Unlock; the iCloud Universal Clipboard; Apple Pay on the web; Siri on the Mac; and iCloud syncing of the Desktop and Documents folders.

We spent the bulk of the time talking about these themes, but spent a little time up front talking about the structure and tempo of the event, and a little at the end debating the magnitude of these year’s announcements. The topic of WWDC will likely spill over in some form into next week’s episode too, as we didn’t cover all the major news in this episode.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson@aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • Apple’s WWDC site, with all videos from the conference
  • Episode 33 (iMessage as a Platform), something we discussed earlier and was featured in a big way at this year’s event
  • Episode 50, our WWDC preview episode from last week.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.