Too often engineering companies get focus on the new , lustrous characteristic that get added to every release , touting the latest and greatest capabilities of their products . And , sure , who does n’t love new and shiny ?
But when you ’re a vast tech company with multiple platform , net ton of products , and a long history , that prioritization of the new can have a deleterious core on all those features that are , honestly , a little more well - worn .
As Apple gets started on its 2023 order of business , there are a few subsist features that could really benefit from some sexual love and aid , rather than the traditional approach of the company pat itself on the back for a job well done as it focalise its sights instead on the future .
Apple introduced Stage Manager in iPadOS 16. It needs a lot of work.
The stages of management
Multitasking on the iPad has been a holy grail for what feel like a tenner , and Apple ’s taken a crack at this several times … but never quite blast it . The most late attempt was , of course , Stage Manager , and while the company has made some belittled tweak to the feature film in recent point release , it ’s far from a finished projection .
Lewis Painter / Foundry
As someone who undertake to apply Stage Manager on a day-by-day basis , I ’m still frustrated not only by weird interface inconsistencies ( why does this floating keyboard palette obscure primal part of my apps ? ) but also by carrying into action issues ( I have several apps that are slow or crashier when in Stage Manager mode ) . In worldwide , I find using it like swim upstream , with one hired man tie behind my back : you’re able to see where you require to go , but getting there is a serious enough workout that you wonder “ why am I doing this ? ”
Apple introduced Stage Manager in iPadOS 16. It needs a lot of work.
Stage Manager continues to have a lot of promise , but it will only reach its full potentiality if Apple keeps work at it . So , here ’s hope that iPadOS 17 brings some more refinements and improvements — and , heck , if Apple want to put out some lowly departure between now and then that keep pluck aspects of it , all to the beneficial .
Go Home, Apple
2022 was supposed to be a heavy class for Apple and smart home tech . The launching of affair , the novel connected menage banner , was set to usher in an era of interoperability among a raft of various protocols and devices ; meanwhile , Apple announce its design to vamp its current home architecture to bring more dependableness and good performance .
alas , none of that went quite as expected . Matter ’s rollout , while progressing , has been pretty slow , and Apple ’s home computer architecture updatewas pulled after many users ran into job .
IDG
Maybe more people would adopt the HomePod if Apple made an effort to improve it and Siri.
All of this only attend to reinforce the frustrations many user have with smart abode technical school . I use Siri via a HomePod miniskirt to interact with the various contraption throughout my house , and it’s … well , “ not great ” is plausibly an understatement . Siri frequently does n’t hear me , misconceive me , or — uncollectible of all — just runs into some heavy problem that prevents it from doing anything . ( “ work on it … still work out … sorry , something pop off wrong ” is an all too frequent expletive - stimulate refrain in my house . )
bright home plate technical school will never achieve all-embracing adoption if people just end up harried when trying to employ their voice helper or earpiece to do something that ’s wanton accomplished by , say , getting up and walk over to a substitution in the paries . Or , say , relying on automation that do n’t go off when they should . At that decimal point , the advantage over “ dumb ” home technical school is lost .
So while I have no doubt Apple ’s new home architecture will show up again at some item this class , here ’s hoping that even then the fellowship does n’t rest on its laurels and continues to try and make smart nursing home tech an unremarkable world instead of a novelty attempted only by the more technical school - savvy .
Deep cuts
Credit where credit is due : Apple does do a good problem of update some of its grownup features . Take Shortcuts , for example . The recent Io 16.2 / macOS 13.1 updates not only added some new features to the automation system of rules , but Apple evendetailed them in release notes . That ’s great !
But for all the improvements Shortcuts has gotten , there ’s plenty more oeuvre left to do . For one affair , there still is n’t parity across platform : macOS , inexplicably , still does n’t offer the Automation feature that Shortcuts on Io and iPadOS do . And too many features in the operating systems do n’t have consolidation with cutoff : Tab Groups in Safari , Spaces on the Mac — even Apple ’s much touted new Freeform app has no Shortcuts support at all .
Shortcuts has already raise that it has the ability to immensely extend the capability of Apple ’s political platform by allowing exploiter to make personalised automations that function their motivation , or follow out functionality that Apple probably wo n’t .
But for keep count it as an asset on its platforms , Apple necessitate to proceed to invest in Shortcuts ’s on-going improvement , which mean that when newfangled feature article number out in iOS 17 and macOS 14 , there should be Shortcuts support for them right off the cricket bat , instead of waiting for it for years — if it ever even shows up at all .
