Making iPads Safer for Students

Apple's announcement comes just days before a summit scheduled by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón in which the officials are to meet with representatives of Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to discuss issues related to mobile device theft. The officials have been pushing manufacturers and carriers to find ways to disable stolen devices in hopes of making them less desirable to thieves.

One of the smaller iOS 7 announcements yesterday was around the iPhone activation security features. Educational institutions need to be highly conscious of both the potential for device theft if we're distributing £300+ devices to our students, or recommending they buy them out of tightly-squeezed personal budgets, not least in terms of their own safety. This is a welcome move that potentially makes stealing an iPad significantly less attractive.

iBooks Lands on OS X Mavericks

Well, there's a lot to say about the next version of OS X which Apple previewed yesterday at its World-Wide Developer Conference keynote, not least that they've run out of cats to name system iterations after, and plumped for California hot-spots instead. Mavericks continues OS X's trend of making worthwhile changes to the back-end that improve performance and power-consumption, elegantly innovating on an already-mature user experience, and finding more ways to unify what happens between the Mac and iOS.

Worth highlighting here though is the addition of iBooks to Mac OS X, and especially the well-thought-out support for books created in iBooks Author. This in a single stroke eliminates one of the primary objections to adopting the iBooks platform that I've heard from educators in the 12 months we've been experimenting with it; Being able to access our iBooks on the faculty's many iMacs (and the student's own–quite common–Apple notebooks) eliminates the need for them to own iPads (though that's not an objection I've heard from many students themselves). 

If that weren't enough, the smart integration of sidebar notes and the ability to auto-generate citations is another win. The battle to become the default choice for academic text books is far from over, but this is a real step in the right direction for iBooks. Now I'm really waiting to see what the next version of iBooks Author brings, and whether Apple will integrate it right into iWork or leave it separate. Thoughts?

Don't Call it "Flat"

The predicted rebirth Susan Kare’s original black-and-white OS design, it ain’t. Actually, let's just ban using the term "flat" altogether for this post. The iOS 7 we met today was full of what Jony Ive called “new types of depth.” Alongside a poppy, neon-and-pastel color scheme, the icons, apps, and homescreen of iOS 7 are full of layering and dimensionality. There are also entirely new types of animation: from a screen that uses the accelerometer to adjust in parallax, to beautiful new animated weather icons.

The visual treatments in iOS 7 seem to have polarised people, though we should remember that this is a first (and beta) version of a fairly major visual redesign. We'll see refinements to this both before release, and in subsequent years. What ought to be clear is that it provides a design framework for much greater sophistication than we've seen so far in Apps. This will be doubly true on the iPad, and I can't wait to see how it plays out there.

I've more to say on the WWDC announcements, but I think we've just seen the first real clues of how iOS will evolve into the primary working environment for a whole new set of people.

Making Apple IDs work for kids

Some really smart thinking on this from the Fan Girls site. I've had to deal with this as a parent to an under-13 iPod fangirl, and it's far from straightforward. Apple should give this young woman a job.

How Digital Art Degrades

For a generation, institutions from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Pompidou Center in Paris have been collecting digital art. But in trying to restore the Davis work, which was finally debugged and reposted at the end of May, the Whitney encountered what many exhibitors, collectors and artists are also discovering: the 1s and 0s of digital art degrade far more rapidly than traditional visual art does, and the demands of upkeep are much higher. Nor is the way forward clear.

“We’re working on constantly shifting grounds,” said Rudolf Frieling, a curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which has been at the forefront of sustaining online art. “Whatever hardware, platform or device we’re using is not going to be there tomorrow.”

Fascinating work, and bound to be an increasing area of concern. I have piles of floppies with HyperCard stacks on them, and a library of Atari 2600 cartridges that says this has been a problem for some time.

The Most Interesting Slide at WWDC

I talked this weekend to Kyle Jobson on Doom Ray, and we touched on anticipation for today's Apple WWDC keynote. As usual there's a ton of speculation about what we can expect to see, though very little in the way of solid information this year. The main thing to remember of course is that it's a developer event, and that means that the most interesting things aren't going to be those things that you can read about in Metro on Tuesday morning.

What I'll be most looking forward to is the same as usual: This slide. It's in the seemingly innocuous list of APIs that Apple reveals more about the near-term future of its platform. It's in the list of public APIs that we learn what Apple hopes developers will build for iOS, or at the very least the building blocks that it's providing for developers to do cool stuff with. When I see that, I start to think about where the platform is headed. This year, I expect to see more evidence that iOS is becoming powerful enough to be my primary computing environment, even more than it already is.

XBox One Game Protection looks like a World of Pain

On the subject of used games, Microsoft says "game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers," and that the company "does not charge a platform fee to retailers, publishers, or consumers for enabling transfer of these games." However, publishers can opt in or out of game resales and are free to set up transfer fees with retailers. Games can also be given to friends via their discs. There are no fees associated with the transfer, but you can only pass them to friends who have been on your Xbox list for at least 30 days and each game can only be transfered once.

There's more about the possibility of loaning discs, and about how often your Xbox will need to connect to the Internet (short version: once a day, more if you're using someone else's console). Try explaining this stuff to a regular person and their kid in a store. It's almost as if appealing to serious gamers means you can assume a high level of understanding of/tolerance for DRM.

It didn't work for music, it's not working for books, and it's unlikely to work here too.

AppCamp for Girls

Have you ever attended a tech conference and wondered, "Where are all the women?" That was founder Jean MacDonald's question. She attends an annual developer gathering with over 5000 attendees every year, and only a few hundred of them are women. Instead of feeling cranky about it, she tried to think of a positive way to address the imbalance.

If you're in the US you should donate to this. Heck, even if you're not just donate anyway. Anyone know of similar initiatives in the UK or elsewhere?

Liquid Lenses Edge Closer to Mainstream

​I've been talking up this technology for ages, and this Canon patent suggests it's getting ever-closer to being something that could be deployed in tiny cameras. Exciting.

Fraser Speirs' Education Wishlist for iOS 7

This one's for the younger users. iPad's software keyboard shows capitals on the keys but younger users typically don't learn capital letters right away. If a version of the keyboard with lower-case characters were available that would help a lot.

Great suggestion. The others make a lot of sense for at-scale iPad deployment in schools and colleges too, and if anyone knows this stuff, it's Fraser.

One Device, Everywhere

For now, while I use separate devices, I’m beginning to think of them as a single experience: pick up the nearest one and use it.

And that, I believe, points to the future of computing. It isn’t just having to decide which device of many to use. It’s a way of using devices that makes everything one needs to do simple, seamless, and that get out of the way of the task of the moment.

Randy Murray is right that this vision is closer than we might think. The limiting factor is ubiquitous Internet access, but here in the city I can pretty much assume that the device I have closest to hand has access to all my stuff. It's not seamless yet though, and I'm regularly stymied by our overly-locked-down work network that kills things like iMessage and iCloud syncing, and ultimately pushes me to use my personal devices (with their own cellular connections) rather than work-provided networked desktop machines. I imagine that I'm not the only one who's doing that.

A Goal-Based View of Educational Technology

Of course, there isn’t one single holy grail because everyone sees learning differently: the role of academic learning, the function of standardized tests, the utility of having one set of common learning standards, and so on. Unlike the goals of business (profit), athletics (championships), conservation (environmental health), and other "cultural genres," in education the goal -- and thus the perfect system -- is impressively subjective.

Terry Heick over at Edutopia has an interesting way of looking at how technology offers up ways for educators to meet their broader goals.

Adobe Looks to Address Creative Cloud Concerns

However, Adobe did speak to one of the complaints we’ve heard most often: maintaining access to your files in Adobe proprietary formats outside of a membership. Adobe agrees that customers should be able to access files even after their memberships have ended, but the company is as yet vague on details. “Our job is to delight our customers with innovation, but there are a number of options open to us here and we expect to have news around this issue shortly,” Adobe said.

It'll be interesting to see how they handle this. Feature limited reader apps? File translators? It's a big problem for any software that goes subscription-only and has a proprietary format.

The Return of the Cybercafé?

The Guardian newspaper has opened a cafe in East London, ostensibly as a place for journalists to sit and work, but it seems they've blown it by thinking they need to build something reminiscent of a late 1990's Cybercafé:

Where once coffee culture meant broadsheets, mood lighting and oversized sofas, #guardiancoffee seems set up for those more interested in Instagramming their latte art rather than enjoying a conversation. The closest thing to a morning edition you'll find inside is a paper cup; instead, each branded table hosts an immovable iPad in its centre, showing off the Guardian's digital content. However in practice GQ found it to be more of an annoyance than interesting feature; encouraging a workplace for journalists without enough table space to rest a laptop is clearly a novel approach.

Very strange. Doesn't everyone have their own iPad, notebook or smartphone nowadays? If they want to open up access to The Guardian's walled-garden content they should be providing time-limited subscriptions for customers.

Million Dollar Hi-Fi

If I had silly money, this would be how I'd most likely spend it.

Microsoft says the iPad is a PC

But don’t take my word for it. This edict was actually handed down by Microsoft, by which I mean Frank X. Shaw, who heads Microsoft’s communications. In a post to the Official Microsoft Blog this week, Shaw reflected on how his company’s move to devices and services was warranted by the shift I describe above. And he declared, once and for all, that yes, the iPad is a PC.

I agree with much of what Thurrott has to say here, though I don't think of my iPad as a PC. I think of it as something way better that's, bit-by-bit, replacing the PC. Microsoft declaring it to be a PC is a bit like declaring the web to be an evolution of Gopher.

When does a game on a disc stop being a physical product?

Despite the criticism of Microsoft and the Xbox One's approach to game licensing, there still appears to be little clarity over what's legal when it comes to digital–rather than physical–products.​ Ben Kuchera's written a follow-up to his controversial and much-maligned positive spin on all of this:

Higgins offered the example of Netflix. Years ago, Netflix's main business was protected by the right of first sale. They purchased a copy of a DVD, and then they were able to rent that out as many times as they wished. It was their property. However, when Netflix switched to online movies, that right no longer applied even though many of the same principles were at work. Now Netflix is forced to license films and TV shows from publishers, and publishers have every right to refuse.

​This will run and run.

16GB iPod touch

Yesterday Apple stopped selling the 4th generation iPod touch that's hung around as the entry-level model since last autumn's introduction of the higher-price-but-impressively-built 5th generation. That older model looked pretty outdated, especially since the new design is the first in a while to come close to the quality of the current iPhone. In many ways, the latest iPod touch is even nicer than the iPhone–slimmer, lighter and great to hold–and it's a great entry model for the iOS platform. At £249 though, it's very close to the price of an iPad mini, and while that comparison gives you less storage, it also gives you the ability to use Apple iBooks text books and a longer battery life.

The ​16GB model introduced yesterday however (black+silver only) brings the entry price down to under £200 for what I think will be the first time. We lose the main camera and the 'loop' wrist strap connector (for a barely perceptible 2g weight loss), but keep the FaceTime camera on the front, the gorgeous screen, and the super design. I'm hoping that iOS 7 will bring those iBooks-Authored text books to iPods, since this would be a fantastic device for students who aren't ready or able to get an iPad.

​As a gaming device the lower-priced iPod touch gets even more appealing. It's now much closer to the PSP Vita's £170, and even to the 3DS's £130 or so. That price difference disappears if you buy a few games. Is there any iOS game that costs as much as the cheapest game for either of those platforms?

Marco Arment sells The Magazine

​The Magazine wasn't the first app-based publication to eschew the complexity of many print-to-digital approaches, but it was the first to coherently articulate this as a new model for publishing on Newstand. Now Marco has sold to his first employee, and it's definitely in good hands. I sometimes go several issues without having time to read it all, but I keep returning (and keep my subscription active). 

​This snippet from the press release is interesting:: 

Jessica Simmons of Simmons Ardell , formerly of sister design firms Milton Glaser Inc and WBMG, has signed on to design an upcoming print collection drawn from both the first 100 articles appearing in The Magazine and newly commissioned work.

​A print version of the best bits! Count me in.

iOS 7: Expect Evolution, not Revolution

Jim Dalrymple on ​what he expects from iOS 7:

Take a look back at the first version of OS X with the Aqua interface and compare that with what we have today. You can see a lot of the same types of elements in the OS design, but it’s more modern — it’s smoother and less dramatic in its effects.

This is exactly how I've been talking about the changes we should see in iOS 7. There's an outside chance of ultra-flat, but it's slim.