How to Free Up Space Used By Your iPhone or iPad’s Messages App

How to Free Up Space Used By Your iPhone or iPad’s Messages App "If you send and receive a lot of messages, the Messages app can take up a lot of space on your iPhone or iPad. Not only does it store your message history, it keeps photo attachments you’ve received. All this data then takes up iCloud space as part of your backups, too."

After doing yesterdays Apple updates I checked my storage usage and found iMessage was one of the biggest hogs of storage on my iPhone and iPad. I was keeping messages forever and some friends send a lot of pics including some videos. The tips here helped me free up some space.

Apple News

Apple's developer conference is this week and yesterday was their much anticipated Keynote. Unfortunately they announced no new hardware, so that was frustrating (I'm waiting for a next generation watch and laptop). They did announce lots of updates to all their software platforms. There are plenty of articles online so I don't need to repeat them, but I'll say a few things.

watchOS 3 seems to be a significant change to address many of the issues of a confusing UI and slowness. It's not clear what the battery life implications will be but I suspect the next watch hardware update will improve the battery life. Like with other hardware, they'll probably just make sure the longevity stays the same, power for all day usage and needing to recharge each night.

tvOS got a few updates but the big thing seems to be single signon, because activating each app via an onscreen keyboard seems to be such a pain.

OS X got renamed macOS and the update is about connecting to other apple devices better. You can automatically unlock your mac with your apple watch. There's a universal clipboard so you can cut and paste between devices. Apple Pay is enabled on the web and if you buy something on your mac in safari, you verify it by using TouchID on your iPhone. That's all stuff that's nice to have and will be slick if it all works smoothly. Siri also comes to the mac and got a lot of updates in things it knows about (files). As much as I love Quicksilver, I'm looking forward to trying Siri for many things like controling iTunes or looking things up. There also making some changes to files leveraging iCloud. Your desktop is shared among macs and iOS, that could be nice (and incentive to keep your desktop clean). More concerning is they'll have a way to automatically move unused files to iCloud to save space (and I guess do some cleanup). I assume this can be turned off.

One thing that surprised me was the applause for picture-in-picture video support not the mac, as if it hasn't had windows since the beginning. But the demo was cool, dragging a video out of a browser to it's own undecorated window.

iOS got more changes than the others. The lock screen and control center got updates to make them more useful, from what I understand this is to catchup to Android. Music, News and Maps got a redesign. Messages got a lot of new features, some of which look interesting (rich links) and others will make your conversations look more silly (more emojis, stickers, bubble effects). Siri is getting smarter and is being opened to third party apps (Messaging, VoIP, payments, ride booking, photo search, workouts). Photos is getting some AI smarts to recognize and group photos and apparently it's on the device to avoid privacy concerns.

In news after the keynote it seems macOS is finally getting a new modern file system APFS to replace HFS+.

Apple File System is a new, modern file system for iOS, OS X, tvOS and watchOS. It is optimized for Flash/SSD storage and features strong encryption, copy-on-write metadata, space sharing, cloning for files and directories, snapshots, fast directory sizing, atomic safe-save primitives, and improved file system fundamentals.

It will just be a preview in Sierra and probably released in the next version of things. Apparently it will just switch your system over to the new system, magically.

Apple Naming Inconsistencies

Here are the names of the current products available from Apple:

• MacBook, MacBook Air (11" and 13"), MacBook Pro (13" and 15")
• Mac mini, iMac (21.5" and 27"), Mac Pro
• iPad mini 2, iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro (9.7" and 12.9")
• iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus
• Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Edition
• Apple tv

And every place it says "Apple " above, it's really this symbol, which I can't make reliably appear on your screen. If you can the last two lines look like:

• Watch Sport, Watch, Watch Edition
• tv

All the capitalization above is as it's found on Apple's website. I don't understand why "mini" and "tv" aren't capitalized.

I don't understand why the laptops and iMac have inch based sizes and the iPhone just has "Plus" and now "SE". Or why S and SE are in boxes.

They seem to be trying to deal with 3 versions of things where the low end is "mini" (no capital) and the high end is "Pro" (capital) and the middle is either nothing (the watch), Air (the laptop and iPad) or i (the iMac).

The Apple Watch seems the most egregiously different. The main watch having no moniker seems odd, but at least Sport makes sense. Edition is just the completely wrong kind of word in this position.

Here's an attempt at bringing these closer in alignment:

• MacBook (12", 14"), MacBook Pro (13" and 15")
• Mac Mini, iMac (21.5" and 27"), Mac Pro
• iPad Mini, iPad, iPad Plus
• iPhone Mini, iPhone, iPhone Plus
• Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Wealth
• Apple TV

This clearly doesn't clean up everything, they have two much invested in the iMac and iPhone names, but it's a start. The computers use Mini and Pro to designate less or more capabilities. The iPad and iPhone use Mini and Plus to designate size. If every other year they give a little bump to the iPhone, instead of a new number use Pro. So one year the biggest iPhone you could be would be the iPhone Plus 6 and the next the iPhone Plus 6 Pro (maybe that's not great, maybe say 6.5 or just go with 7). I'm willing to stick with iMac over just Mac to indicate it has a built in display (which the iPhone and iPad do too and argues that it should have been called iWatch).

I'm basically arguing that the MacBook line should subsume the MacBook Air line, which seems inevitable. Also that the iPad Pro was a mistake in naming. They should have stuck with size and strived to the keep the capabilities the same. The 9.7" iPad Pro should have replaced the iPad Air and both should have just been called iPad. They did it the way they did so that they could get more money for the "Air" and still sell the regular non-Air for a year or two at a slightly lower price.

The Apple Watch Wealth is a joke, but come up with something better than Edition. Gold seems like the obvious choice, but it's confusing with the Rose Gold and Gold colors the Sport comes in.

And don't get me started on the difference between Apple Music, iTunes Store, iTunes, and the iOS Music app; I really don't understand it all details.

The iPad Pro's embedded Apple SIM

Apple had an event on Monday and announced a few expected things. The 4" iPhone turned out to be roughly an iPhone 6S in the body of an iPhone 5.

They also announced a new iPad Pro, in the body of an iPad Air 2. So it's 9.7" display and works with the Apple Pencil and does a few other new things. It has the camera bump from the iPhone 6 but it apparently doesn't make the iPad wobble if you lay it flat on a table. People are whining that it doesn't have the big iPad Pro's 4GB of RAM instead it just has the iPad Air 2's 2GB (which has been great for me). One new thing is a new embedded Apple SIM card on the wireless models. TechCrunch explains the details of The iPad Pro's embedded Apple SIM and which carriers use it or lock you in.

Can the MacBook Pro Replace Your iPad?

Fraser Spears wrote a pretty funny article Can the MacBook Pro Replace Your iPad?. It's a review of a MacBook Pro in the tone of many of iPad Pro reviews I've seen. A sample:

Firstly, consider the hardware. The huge issue with the MacBook Pro is its form factor. The fact that the keyboard and screen are limited to being held in an L-shaped configuration seriously limits its flexibility. It is basically impossible to use a MacBook pro while standing up and downright dangerous to use when walking around. Your computing is limited to times when you are able to find somewhere to sit down.

I've played with an iPad Pro and it is really nice. I love looking at the big the screen and the on-screen keyboard is definitely an improvement. But I don't love holding the big screen. It's a bit awkward to hold one-handed and it's a bit heavy to hold for a while.

My sister wanted to replace her iPad 2 and spent a couple of hours in the Apple Store last week debating between the Pro and the Air 2. She didn't need cellular and 64GB was plenty; of course that would have meant a 128GB Pro. Watching her play with each I noticed she typically held the iPad in one hand and typed with the other; but with the Pro, she let it tilt so the other corner leaned against the table. She didn't realize she was doing it until I pointed it out. While the Pencil is amazing to use, I think it's really for artists. The keyboard cover does seem a thing to get. Everyone types and no one likes typing on a glass screen, and why invest $59 or $79 in a cover or case only to get the keyboard one later. With the Air there's no keyboard option and I find a cover (as opposed to a case) has been good enough. A Pro also means getting a new bag to carry it in. So including AppleCare+ the price difference is a significant $480.

• 128GB iPad Pro, keyboard cover, AppleCare: $949 + $169 + $99 = $1217
• 64GB iPad Air 2, smart cover, AppleCare: $599 + $39 + $99 = $737

I suspect the next generation of iPad Pro will be more interesting. A 64GB model would bring down the price $100. Like all things Apple I suspect it will get thinner and lighter. If they add ForceTouch to the keyboard it could be really interesting (so I'd be happy with a cover rather than the keyboard one). At $1007 ($849 + $59 + $99) it seems a more reasonable splurge, being just $270 more than the Air. A thousand dollars is still a lot for an additional device but it's also a good deal less than a MacBook.

iPad Pro and Apple Envy

A few years ago, going into an Apple Store was kinda boring for me. I had a new iMac, a recent iPhone and iPad and an AppleTV. There wasn't much there for me to covet, and even playing with stuff wasn't that interesting because it wasn't customized for me.

Today I went into the Apple Store to look at the new iPad Pro. Since getting my iPad 2 I've wanted a bigger iPad for two principle reasons. First I wanted a full sized on-screen keyboard. The one on the iPad and now the iPad Air is a little smaller. Second, I wanted the page to be a full 8.5 x 11 so that magazines and particularly comics could be seen at full sized. Lots of magazine apps found ways to cope, either by basically being a full page pdf that you zoomed and scrolled around (which sucked) or by doing that and having an Instapaper-like "reading mode" which seemed dumb. If you're a magazine and you need a separate reading mode, you're doing it wrong. Or some, like Entertainment Weekly (best) and Wired (good, at times odd) did a lot to redisign their magazine for the iPad screen. In comics, once iPad's got retina displays I could mostly read the page shown in full, though they also had a mode that zoomed in on each panel with a swipe. Comics are designed to show the whole page at once, so panel-by-panel was a lesser experience.

The Apple Store didn't have a comics app on the iPad Pro so I couldn't check that out, but it seems it does show a full page at full size. Double page spreads are still an issue compared to paper. I did play with the on-screen keyboard and it is definitely nicer than the one on the iPad Air 2. But it's still a glass keyboard with no feedback. I played with the keyboard screen cover and it was surprisingly nice. Definitely an improvement over the on-screen one. If you're going to do a lot of typing, I'd definitely consider it.

I also played with the pencil and as the reviews have all stated, it's great. It feels very responsive while writing, much better than any stylus I've used and I had no problems with palm rejection.

I didn't try the speakers

In general I agree with all the reviews of the iPad Pro I've seen. It's big. It's heavy, though lighter than you'd expect. The pencil is great. The keyboard is good (though there need to be some more keyboard shortcuts). It seems little too big to comfortably hold with one hand, though it's doable and it might get more natural with practice. After having the iPad 2 for several years, the iPad Air 2 is practically ethereal. It would be great to use at a desk, I'm not sure about on a couch.

My iPad Air 2 is just about a year old, and runs great, even better with the new iOS 9 features. So I can wait a few years before upgrading to a Pro. Maybe the price will come down a little, and the weight, and I'm sure iOS 10 and 11 will add significant improvements to it. The on-screen keyboard could be very interesting if they could get the haptic feedback from the new touchpad or Apple Watch.

But visiting the Apple Store I realized there are lot of toys I don't have. I played with the new Apple TV and the remote is pretty nice. Since I'm all in on TiVo and movie channels from FiOS I don't really need to consume TV or movies from Apple. I looked at the Apple Watch again and it's nice. I can still wait for an update or two. While I love my 27" iMac, I'm interested in a small laptop for use when not at my desk (in the living room or while travelling). A MacBook seems like the right device, but I can wait a revision or two for a little more power. The 15" MacBook Pro seemed huge, the 13" seemed nice but a little more than I need. The Air would be pretty good, though a retina screen is starting to be the minimum for me. I suspect Apple will sort all that out in the next year or two. I tried the new keyboard and trackpad and they're nice, but I see no need to upgrade. I do wish they'd make a full keyboard with a number pad.

Starmap

Since my first iPhone I've used an astronomy program called Starmap. There are several popular such programs but this has been my favorite and I've always been surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. They've just released a big upgrade, known as Starmap 2. It's a universal app available for free in the app store with basic features that will be sufficient for most users. It basically does everything, show the map, knows where you are and which direction you're pointing, show info about the stars, planets, etc. With additional purchases it can control telescopes, show more catalogs, show a view flying through the solar system, track satellites, speak stories explaining astronomy while pointing you at things to look at.

There are also a few in-app purchases for more features and those are on sale for Monday (but starting now, Sun evening). The Classic version, normally $5 is on sale (in the US) for just $2 and the Pro version is on sale for $7 (normal $15). Buying the feature on one device means you can use them on all of your devices, so for $7 I upgraded to Pro on both my iPhone and iPad (and Classic probably would have been fine for me).

I highly recommend downloading it and if you like it, buying some of the add-ons on Monday.

iOS 9 Reviews

Federico Viticci's iOS 9: The MacStories Review, Created on iPad is both a comprehensive review and kind of a QA plan for iOS 9. 23 pages long!

Rene Ritchie's review is equally long but a bit breezier, iOS 9 review.

If you want something shorter, Jason Snell does a good job pointing out new features on the iPad including, Slide Over, Split View, Picture in Picture, Keyboard shortcuts and my favorite, trackpad support in the software keyboard.

These quick articles have some useful tips:

• The Best Secret Features of iOS 9
• 17 secret iOS 9 tricks everyone should know

Here's a review of the new News app, Apple’s iOS 9 News App Review: Broken News. I tried it for a few minutes and gave up. The review lists alternatives at the bottom and I'm a happy user of Reeder backed by Feedly and I use NYT Now and occasionally I look at Nuzzle

Apple Event

I only have time for some quick thoughts on today's Apple Event

Apple Watch seems like it's doing well. The changes cosmetic (new colors for aluminum and some new bands) rather than a true 2.0 with new sensors or other changes (which will probably come in the first half of next year). The fact that you can get a black steel model with a sport band instead of having to get the expensive bracelet is nice. The new faces are just new images. New complications and 3rd party complications could be interesting if you have a specific need.

The idea that Hermes is selling models that have custom faces (I think that's what's happening) is one I hadn't thought of. This might explain why people can write apps but not faces.

The IPad Pro is very interesting but I want to see it in person to get a sense of how large it is. I don't care about the (4) speakers as much but at this point a full 1.5 lbs like the first gen iPad sounds heavy. They made a big deal about the Smart Keyboard but I'm more interesting in whether the software keyboard is really full sized and how nice it would be to type with it on my lap. It's very expensive too. I could live with just wifi but I'd be happier with 64GB than 32GB, leaving the 128GB option at $949. The Pencil seems like a really nice and expensive stylus. Can wait to see tourists holding up a giant iPad Pro to take pictures with.

They now sell 5 models of iPad and that seems like two too many. Each comes in 3 colors, 3 storage sizes and with or without cellular for a total of almost 90 models. There should just be Mini, Air (or regular) and Pro and they should all be in 32, 64 and 128GB models. They're including older models at lower price points but I think they should work on more improvements to get people to replace them more often and beef up the used market as a result.

The medical apps they demoed seemed pretty nice, but I know it will be 5-10 years before I see them in my doctor's office (I still can't email my doctor, though I can get x-rays on a CD, now if only my iMac had a CD reader).

Seems like they did well with Apple TV. A TouchPad on the remote is a nice idea and while they didn't emphasize it, it acts like a Wiimote so it's better as a game controller. Depending on how well it works, the Siri interface could be really nice. The MLB app could be killer, though they didn't mention pricing or blackout details. Can someone in Boston watch a Red Sox game live on it? I'm guessing not. I don't think I'm giving up my TiVo Roamio Pro any time soon. And by the way, it's search works across my recordings, netflix, amazon, hulu and other services too, though I have to type it, the Slide Pro Remote has made that pretty painless. I hope Siri has an easy way to tell her that she interpreted the last thing you said incorrectly.

The apps and games stuff seems nice. And apparently Apps are universal across the new Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad which is really nice.

The iPhone 6s and 6s+ seem nice too. Sure we got regular improvements in chips and cameras and a new rose gold color, but they seem to have done the 3D Touch thing well. The UI is finally using the layers that were so explicitly mentioned in Ive's iOS 7 design. It does seem like iOS is finally getting a right-click. Live Photos seems like a gimmick. I've seen tweets how they're Hogwart's paintings or that Window's phone have had them (is this true? I've not heard of them).

The new iCloud storage pricing is better and the new iPhone Upgrade program is something I'd have to work out the math for to consider (particularly with Verizon's new plans). I paid $416 in December for a 64GB iPhone 6 with AppleCare (and sales tax) I plan to keep for two years. That would instead be $36.58/month or ~$440 a year but I'd get a new phone in a year.

Serious OS X and iOS flaws let hackers steal keychain, 1Password contents

I only saw a couple of articles on this and I waited until Ars wrote their typically comprehensive piece, Serious OS X and iOS flaws let hackers steal keychain, 1Password contents.

"Researchers have uncovered huge holes in the application sandboxes protecting Apple's OS X and iOS operating systems, a discovery that allows them to create apps that pilfer iCloud, Gmail, and banking passwords and can also siphon data from 1Password, Evernote, and other apps.

The malicious proof-of-concept apps were approved by the Apple Store, which requires all qualifying submissions to treat every other app as untrusted. Despite the supposed vetting by Apple engineers, the researchers' apps were able to bypass sandboxing protections that are supposed to prevent one app from accessing the credentials, contacts, and other resources belonging to another app. Like Linux, Android, Windows, and most other mainstream OSes, OS X and iOS strictly limit app access for the purpose of protecting them against malware. The success of the researchers' cross-app resource access—or XARA—attacks, raises troubling doubts about those assurances on the widely used Apple platforms."

iMore Best of 2014 Awards

iMore lists their Best of 2014 Awards for iOS and OS X products. Nice list.

iOS ‘Masque Attack’

Cult of Mac writes iOS ‘Masque Attack’ vulnerability could be more dangerous than WireLurker "To keep yourself protected from Masque Attack, iOS users should not install any apps unless they’re coming directly from the App Store. Do no click on ‘Install’ if a pop-up from a website appears on your iPhone, no matter what it says. And if you open an app and iOS displays an alert that it’s from an ‘Untrusted App Developer’ you should tap Don’t Trust and uninstall immediately."

So to be susceptible you have to install an app not from the app store. It's pretty easy to avoid that. Yes many naive users might be fooled (and many legitimate web sites pop open page or window asking if you want to install their app) but the App Store is so central to the iOS experience I think many people are scared if they aren't installing from the App Store.

Cops can force you to use Touch ID, but not your passcode

Cult of Mac reports Cops can force you to use Touch ID, but not your passcode.

"A related feature has now been the subject of a court case in Virginia, however, with the judge ruling that cops can legally force suspects to manually unlock their iPhones using Touch ID. This differs from the current ruling related to passcodes. Police cannot force defendants to give these up on the basis that they are considered ‘knowledge’ rather than a physical object, and that knowledge is protected by the Fifth Amendment. A fingerprint, on the other hand, is considered to be more in line with a DNA sample or physical key, which means that citizens are compelled to give them up to police."

I hate when laws don't keep up with technology. This is similar to when you privacy rights were different based on if your ISP was a phone company or a cable company.

iPad Air 2

So the new iPad is available in stores. I noticed it today and ran over to pick one up. The Apple Store was a little less busy than usual and there was no crazy long line, it was nice. I picked up an iPad and found it really nice and an employee asked if I had any questions. I said "Yes, can I have one". They had stuff in stock that was easy. I replaced my 64GB iPad 2 with another maxed out iPad; 128GB with cellular using Apple's new SIM card. I'm sure 64GB would have been fine, but I was trying to future-proof a little. I also could have done with a wifi only model, but I have used the cellular connection on occasion and while I could tether to my iPhone, I like that the iPad can use another network if Verizon isn't giving good reception. Also, you only get real GPS if you get the cellular model.

I ran into one issue buying it, my credit card was denied. First time that ever happened. I called the customer service number on the back and got to fraud detection. Apparently there was no other reason to suspect fraud other than I was buying an iPad, at an Apple Store I've regularly bought stuff at with that card. The Apple clerk told me it's pretty common happening 2-3 times a day. I finally got to a person and everything was cleared.

I got it home and backed up my iPad 2 and then plugged in the new iPad and did a restore. Oddly not everything came over. I got the right number of home pages and some folders but only a couple of apps. I called AppleCare and why the guy was walking through some simple stuff, I plugged in the new iPad again and it started another sync and it started copying all the other apps over. I told him it was working and he didn't have to wait for it finish and hung up. Though after an hour it was only about halfway done and stopped. I started another sync and that one finally worked, recopying over what was done and finishing with everything else.

So how is it? Great. It's smaller than my iPad 2 and feels a lot easier to hold. It's also a lot zippier. It's very responsive, like the iPad 2 was when I first got it. Because my iTunes backup was encrypted (there's a checkbox in the iTunes Summary page for the iPad to do this) and because I've been using iCloud Keychain all my passwords came over too, so all my apps just work. The new retina screen is nice. I can't say I can discern that's it's much better than the iPad 2, but everything does seem sharper. Comics look noticeably better on it. Handoff works and I suspect I'll use that a fair amount with the iMac. I've setup TouchID and I think I'll get used to that very quickly. I haven't used it much yet, but I'm looking forward to having Siri on my iPad, I've tried to use it a few times since getting it on an iPhone. Now I'll want it on my iMac, but I suspect Hey Siri will make up for it.

Two small issues so far. First it was nice that I got the rest of iWork included with the iPad (I had only bought Numbers). But while a version was on it, and update was in the App Store and it took 3 or 4 attempts to actually get them installed. I guess they were busy today. Also, while apps came over fine (eventually), any web apps that had home page icons were there, but their icon was a blank. A couple of times visiting the page was enough to fill in the icon, and a couple of times I had to reinstall the home page shortcut.

So hopefully, I'm done with Apple upgrades for at least a little bit.

Yosemite

So lots of upgrades lately. iOS 8.1 came out and I installed on the iPhone 5 without difficultly. I still haven't upgraded the iPad 2 to iOS 8 as I understand it just slows to a crawl and 8.1 isn't any better. I'll just wait til I get a new iPad Air 2 which I'll do shortly.

I upgrade first the old MacBook Pro and then the iMac to Yosemite. It mostly went well. The MBP was easy and all my apps seemed to work so I did the iMac today. I started the download last night and was crawling for a while (5+ days to go for several hours) but then it started to come down quickly and was done after a few hours. There are a number of forum threads I found that said that changing DNS servers helped, but it doesn't really. (In fact I read a couple of years ago that if you change from your ISPs DNS servers to Google's or OpenDNS or something that your location information is lost and CDNs don't know which server is closest to you. I don't know if that's true, but my experience is that using FiOS DNS is at least as good as using others.).

Once it was downloaded the installer started. I quit it and made a bootable USB stick. This morning I did the install and it went pretty quickly. Then I started going through the new features, via a few articles I had saved. The only annoying thing I fixed was to Reduce transparency in the Accessibility System Preferences. I don't know why anyone would want it on.

I still have not enabled iCloud Drive because my iPad 2 running iOS 7 can't use it. But that shouldn't be much of a problem for while. Update: It turns out it breaks Tweetbot's sync'ing. It looks like there is not longer an iCloud "Documents & Data" setting, there's just iCloud Drive, so they probably have no other way to share data.

I really wanted to try some of the Continuity features that connect the mac to the phone. There were three. First I got AirDrop working. I find it's a little flakey. I enable it on both and turn on the phone but if I open the Finder to AirDrop it doesn't show me (and when it does it's just my picture with my name, not the name of my iPhone. I sometimes can use AirDrop from Safari's share menu and send it to my phone, but not always.

The next thing was Handoff. This didn't work until I rebooted my iMac. When it does work I can see the last app you've used on one device on the other device. I've used Handoff with Safari and Mail both ways and it's pretty slick.

The last one was Phone calls and that was a bear. Basically the Mac can act like a speaker phone for your iPhone and you're supposed to be able to start calls from the mac (in the old days you do this with a bluetooth connection, but that hasn't worked for a while). I kept getting an error that it wasn't working and to check that both devices were on the same wifi network and using the same iCloud account. They were. There's a setting to enable it in FaceTime and that was on too. I called AppleCare. I got a woman who didn't know much but was nice enough. She talked to second level support and left me on hold for a very long time and we didn't come to any conclusion (other than you didn't need to bluetooth pair your iPhone and mac, which didn't work anyway). She forwarded me on to some iPhone specialist but I think it went back to first line AppleCare and I got a woman with a thick accent I couldn't understand. She just seemed to forward me on to Bob. Bob was very helpful. He apologized that this stuff was new to everyone and they were getting slammed with support calls. We tried a few things (including resetting PRAM) but that didn't help. He did find on some forum the solution. On the iPhone I had to turn off FaceTime and Handoff and then turn them back on. That did it. Rebooting the phone didn't do it but manually turning those off and on did. It only took almost 2 hours on the phone with AppleCare (including hold time) but now a feature I'll probably never use again is working :)

Otherwise Yosemite seems nice. I'm fine with the new look though the new toolbars will take a little getting used to.

Also a new Emacs came out on Monday and seems to working well for me. Now to see if iOS 8.1 means my car can finally read text messages to me. :)

Creating Chord Intelligence

SuperMegaUltraGroovy is company that makes Capo software for Mac and iOS to help musicians learn new songs.

"We just shipped Capo touch and Capo 3.1 last week—on the same day!—and a large part of the time on this project was spent building Chord Intelligence. I feel that the name is fitting; Chord Intelligence is trained from a collection of music and applies its knowledge to what it hears in an audio recording. You read that correctly: Capo’s new chord detection engine is trained, and it does indeed learn."

Chord Intelligence is a fairly technical article describing the challenges of creating this software. Nice read.

Why Apple really cares about your privacy | Macworld

Rich Mogull in MacWorld makes a case about Why Apple really cares about your privacy.

"Google can’t stop scanning user email, since targeted advertising is its core business. Facebook won’t encrypt messages end-to-end for the very same reason. Microsoft can’t restrict enterprise administrators from controlling phones and computers, since enterprise manageability is core to its primary customer base, especially as it loses ground in the consumer market. Android—okay, Google—can’t dictate hardware design, and thus can’t consistently secure customer data on the device. Essentially, Apple uses the difference in its business model to attack competitors on privacy.

Apple makes its money selling hardware to consumers. All of its software and services are predominantly there to drive hardware (and to a lesser extent, media) sales. The consumer is the customer, not advertisers or enterprises. The only other companies in a similar position—such as Sony—lack the strength, software, and ecosystems to truly compete. Apple also clearly sees nothing to gain in designing systems that support government snooping (though it will be interesting to see how that works as it extends its services into China and other nations where domestic monitoring is legally mandated)."

Why you should take notes by hand — not on a laptop

Vox writes Why you should take notes by hand — not on a laptop "Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, the psychologists who conducted the new research, believe it's because students on laptops usually just mindlessly type everything a professor says. Those taking notes by hand, though, have to actively listen and decide what's important — because they generally can't write fast enough to get everything down — which ultimately helps them learn."

"Both of these studies, though, eliminated a key benefit of laptop note-taking: the ability to look over a much more complete set of notes while studying. So as a final test, the researchers had students watch a seven-minute lecture (taking notes either on a laptop or by hand), let a week pass, then gave some of the students ten minutes to study their notes before taking a test. Having time to study mattered — but only for students who'd taken notes by hand. These students did significantly better on both conceptual and factual questions. But studying didn't help laptop users at all, and even made them perform slightly worse on the test."

I've seen a few similar things in the last year but have been to lazy to check if it's all coming from the same study or if the results have been reproduced. I do generally feel like hand writing notes is more effective but also more frustrating. It's slower and harder to get down everything you might want; unless there are graphs or drawings, they're way easier to do via a pen than on a computer. Though it is a lot nicer to have typed notes to search through rather than paper.

If the theory is that it's too easy to type notes on laptop and it needs to be harder to help you learn, I wonder what studies of using an iPad would show. Typing on an iPad is no where near as easy as on a laptop. And if it's the difficulty that is the point, then using handwriting apps on an iPad would be even better than handwriting on paper.

Oh and I've seen a few responses similar to Ezra Klein's, "Yes, but what if you literally can't read the notes you take by hand?" My answer is go back to second grade and learn how to write.

Apple Announcements

So Apples Developer's Conference is happing this week and the Keynote was today where they announce new stuff. There was no hardware announced but there was a TON of new software. OS X and iOS both got big updates. There will be lots of articles written about the details. They opened up a lot of things on iOS that were previously off limits for developers who weren't Apple.

They also made Macs and iOS devices work better together. Everyone wanted AirDrop to work between Macs and iOS but that was just the beginning of the announcement. With Handoff they now know when they're near each other and via a technology they're calling Continuity let you easily continue a task from one device to another. Reading a web page on your Mac? You can now pick up your iPad and swipe up on the lock screen and see the same page. Started an email on an iPhone, click an icon on your Mac's dock and finish it up on the Mac. In a lot of places they seemed really good about creating a new technology and not just creating one new feature that used it, but all the logical ones you'd want. Texts and voice (and maybe video) chats can be moved between devices. Your phone rings the Caller ID info appears on your Mac. Right click on a phone number anywhere on your mac and menu lets you call it from your phone. Your Mac can notice an iPhone nearby and prompt you to have it set up a hotspot.

Spotlight got a UI update. The search window now pops up in the middle of the screen like Quicksilver and there's not just a list of results but a preview pane of the first one which can also show wikipedia page previews and maps and other things. It's kinda like what Google does with their results now with the pane on the right.

On iOS they beefed up Mail and Messages. The system keyboard now (finally) has predictive typing and third parties can add new system-wide keyboards. There's now an iCloud Drive and apps can use a picker to find files form other apps. So you can pick the app you want to use to view that PDF you have.

They mentioned some new APIs. With HealthKit and HomeKit they worked with leading venders to define a new API so that data can be shared easily. They also (again finally) added family sharing support for iTunes and photos and other things.

The App Store got a lot of new features. There's trending searches and Editor's Picks and Bundle pricing. There's beta testing platform developers can make use of and they can post videos of the apps (no more 5 screenshot limitation). They still didn't mention anything about App trials which I think would really help developers (and users).

There were some oddities. Markup lets you draw on pictures in mac Mail and has some shape recognition stuff left over from the Newton. It also has some PDF annotating and signing features. These are fine, but seem oddly squeezed into Mail rather than being system wide.

And then they announced the crazy thing. Ever since Apple bought Next the programming language for OS X and iOS has been Objective-C. They announced a new language called Swift that's "Objective-C without the C". They say it's fast, modern, safe and interactive. The quick demo looked slick. The IDE had a right pane that showed visual representations of things. Graphs showing the values of vectors and even demos of a sprite-based game being developed.

Even without any hardware announcements this was a really interesting presentation. Rumors that Apple can't innovate anymore are way way off. Also the people presenting all did a very good job. Not quite Steve level, but pretty close. APPL managed to fall during the keynote, but I doubt this is will last long.

iOS Note Taking Apps

I've always found note taking kind of interesting; what techniques are effective and what apps are useful. In college I took hand written notes, on unlined pages and with a couple of pen colors. On laptops I just typed into a plain text file using Emacs. When I started this blog I used to take handwritten notes in a Moleskin notebook. When the iPhone and then the iPad came out I started trying a lot of different note taking apps. I meant to write a review of many of them but never quite got around to it. Here's what I'm using and you should particularly look at iThoughts today.

I now sync things to a Dropbox folder. and mostly use Markdown format just to have something to be consistent with and because many apps have a markdown preview mode that makes things pretty.

• Simplenote - I use this for quick notes. It comes with it's own cloud syncing service that's worked well for me. i use nvAlt on the Mac for access to the notes. I now tend to write in Markdown format. I use this for restaurant lists, movie lists, little things I want to remember either to bring on an iPhone or because I don't know another good place to put it (a list of links to college commencement pages that I check once a year because they cause traffic problems in Boston).
• Editorial - This is the best app on iOS for typed notes. It's now universal, has good markdown support, an extended keyboard and lets you create new "Workflows" that act as new commands by using a graphical system instead of having to write code. The only limitation I've found is that it syncs to just one Dropbox folder instead of letting you browse (I could be wrong). Before Editorial, iA Writer was my app of choice for typed notes.
• NotesPlus - This is the best handwriting app I've found (it's iPad only and while probably stay that way as an iPhone screen is too small). It's got a tons of features, in-app purchase for converting handwriting to text, all the drawing tools you want (including smart shapes like on an Apple Newton), a built-in browser for research, does voice recordings, etc. Dan Bricklin's Note Taker HD is another powerful app but I never liked the user interface and never tried it.
• iThoughts - This is the best mind mapping app I've found. I kept hearing about mind maps and thought they might be useful but they never quite worked for me until this app. It's got enough features that maps are easy to create and manipulate and is still easy to use. I still don't use it that often but it's great for things that you want to move around a bunch. Today I found out they did a big iOS7 update and made it universal. It's on sale for just $2 (instead of $10) until June 1st. At that price it's a steal. I don't do mind maps enough to get the companion Mac app for ~$50, but the iOS version supports many export formats (like pdf and markdown).
• GoodReader - not a note taking app but a PDF reader and a great one. It handles large files easily and works great on an iPad. E.g., lets you crop pages for the margins so its maximally zoomed (Supreme Court decisions have huge margins). Lets you highlight text in different colors and then can send email of just the highlights. That might be the best note taking feature I've ever used.

I have Evernote but don't really use it (though some people swear by it). On the Mac I've been a long time user (and sometime employee) of The Hit List for todo lists. It seemed to get everything right while all the apps are missing something or are too hard to use. THL got an iPhone app (and a paid sync'ing service) and then went fallow. It was bought out and seems to have new life as the mac version got an update this week. I can't quite endorse it for everyone yet, but I'm hopeful and it's worth a look.