iOS tip: Get icons easily into jiggly mode

iOS tip: Get icons easily into jiggly mode

From the iPhone 6S through the iPhone XS, there was a feature called “3D touch” where you could press harder on the screen and, in some cases, this would unlock different functionality.

One point of confusion was that there was also a “long press”, which was more like a tap and hold, which would also unlock different technology.

The venerable iOS home screen

A perfect example of this was the iOS home screen.

  • Tap = launch the app
  • Long press = put icons in edit (jiggly) mode
  • 3D touch = bring up menu, sometimes with app-specific options

If you never used 3D touch, the home screen behaved on the 6S to XS as it did on previous iPhones. However, when 3D touch went away in the iPhone 11, Apple was left with a dilemma. They wanted to keep the menu functionality, but still allow home screen editing.

Their solution was …

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Prototypes: Viewing minimized/recent documents

Prototypes: Viewing minimized/recent documents

This was a never shipped feature that was near and dear to my heart. It addressed two things.

First, I knew that people sometimes remember the app they used to create a document, but perhaps not the name of the document or where they put it. I feel this is still a great shortcoming in macOS.

I feel that where a document is filed is not as important as what it contains and when you worked on last. Just in my own experience, I see people freeze up when the OS asks them where to file something and what to name it.

I felt that documents should be loosely tied to applications for those that thought of their documents that way. Why waste time filing things away if you remember you created it in MS Word yesterday?

Secondly, when it came to minimized windows, especially those minimized into the application …

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The power of dopey ideas

The power of dopey ideas

After a protracted move to Portland (Oregon), I’m back to writing about parrots.

Steve used to say to me, and he used to say this a lot. Hey Jony, here’s a dopey idea. And sometimes they were. Really dopey. Sometimes they were truly dreadful. But sometimes they took the air from the room. And they left us both completely silent. Bold, crazy, magnificent ideas. Or quiet, simple ones. Which in their subtlety, their detail, they were utterly profound.

Jony Ive, Steve Jobs memorial service, Apple Campus, 2011

One of the secrets of Apple’s success comes in this wonderful quote from Jony Ive. The part he didn’t mention—partly because it wasn’t relevant to the story—is that sometimes the magnificent ideas came out of the dopey ideas.

All of us are capable of bold, crazy, or magnificent ideas, but if we’re not allowed the freedom to have dopey ideas and voice them, …

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Scott Forstall’s hair becomes a ski jump

Scott Forstall’s hair becomes a ski jump

You need go no further than Scott Forstall’s Twitter feed to find a picture of his hair that had the signature flip up in the front.

Some referred to it as a ski jump and apparently Steve Jobs took note in one high-level meeting. A strong caveat to this story. I was not in this meeting but a trusted source in the meeting related it to me.

The meeting

As part of this meeting, Scott was demoing some new technology from his organization to a group of people including Steve Jobs.

While trying to remain focused and serious on the task at hand, Steve was a bundle of energy, pacing around the room.

In at least this one meeting, when Steve passed Scott in the room, he lifted his hand above Scott’s head and swooped it down, then up, as if miming someone using his hair as a ski jump.…

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Confessions of a retired bug screener

Confessions of a retired bug screener

My good friend Anika, the ant bear

In the context of this article, “bug screening” means taking a bug report filed by an employee or developer or someone else. Then, doing any number of things:

  • Clean it up to make it more clear and understandable
  • Figure out if it’s already a known issue
  • Try to reproduce the problem
  • Send the bug report back if more information is needed
  • Route the bug to someone
  • Set a priority and perhaps a milestone where the bug should be fixed

Most of my jobs at Apple involved screening bugs and in one 30 month period I screened over 45,000 bugs. Not surprisingly, it was 100% of my job. The reason this is important to mention (other than it gives me a lot of credibility) was that 15 years earlier, the bug flow was small enough that it was only a small fraction of my …

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Becoming disabled while working a tech job

Becoming disabled while working a tech job

Tech workers believe that they have the best health insurance and all other types of insurance offered by their company. And they are probably right. I don’t have any data to prove otherwise.

What I do know from my own research and experience is that the disability insurance offered by Apple and other tech companies could leave you in dire straights much more easily than you know.

There are two types of disability: short-term (12 weeks), and long-term (indefinite with a big asterisk). A disability is something that partially or completely prevents you from doing your job. It could be anything from a serious physical injury to a debilitating mental illness.

Remember, this could be some terrible infection you get and end up in the hospital for months. Medical insurance covers the bills but your employer will only pay you via disability insurance. Same goes for an inherited mental condition …

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Desktop Pictures taken by Steve Jobs

Desktop Pictures taken by Steve Jobs

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Steve Jobs liked to take pictures. He was even taking a picture the last time I saw him. However, many people might not know that some of his photos shipped as Desktop Pictures in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

And here they are:

There were 3 other photos that I was unable to confirm (or remember) ever made it into a Mac OS X release, but here they are:

…

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12 things I’d change about auto-correct

12 things I’d change about auto-correct

While auto-correct frustrates every iPhone user at one time or another, I imagine it’s an insanely complex feature to get right. After using it for 13 years now, I find that I have a list of small things I’d love to see change rather than a few number of really big changes.

I wanted to make this more a list of suggestions that to just rip into auto-correct. Note that I can always keep a very close eye on the completion bar but to have to look at three possible spellings as I type a word is cumbersome.

1) Never auto-correct a word that is already a valid word

Auto-correct likes to outsmart us by choosing a more common word than we actually typed.

In some cases, it might be a welcome surprise, but I feel it’s outweighed by the frustration when it changes my valid word. If I really …

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Google vs Apple Maps

Google vs Apple Maps

I ask myself the question why I bother writing this. There are hundreds of articles on the web comparing these two products but I may offer a unique perspective.

  • I used Apple Maps from long before it shipped until today
  • I was a Quality Engineer at Apple for 20 years, which gives me a unique perspective
  • I use maps 100% of the time when I drive, walk, plan trips, even if I’ve been there hundreds of times

I’ll break this into categories that are in no particular order of importance, except the first. Well, the first one is the most important.

Search

Google was founded on search. They were so much better than anyone else when they burst on the scene. Today, the gap is narrowed but I think most people would admit they are the best, especially if you ignore privacy concerns. Google is so good at search in …

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Manifestos

Manifestos

In 20 years at Apple, I obviously saw a lot and was sometimes motivated to write long, laborious manifestos about things. Usually they were practices and processes I felt needed to change.

These were initially published on my internal blog at Apple. So if you love manifestos and have a lot of time on your hands, here they are.

Enjoy.

…

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