Apple iPad and Apple Pencil Confusion

After the recent Apple announcement there are now five iPads in the range.

This fact alone means it is difficult for the typical consumer to make a buying decision.

And the Apple Pencil support is even more confusing. While they all support the Apple Pencil, the 2019 iPads only support the Apple Pencil 1, while the 2018 iPad Pros only support the Apple Pencil 2.

Not a situation I'd expect to witness in the Steve Jobs era.

One way to clear up the Apple Pencil confusion is to change the names to...
Apple Pencil Classic (for non-Pro iPads)
Apple Pencil Pro (for iPads Pros)

On a related note now we have Apple Pencil support on the complete iPad range will we start to see coding tools that can generate code from Pencil-drawn gestures and symbols?

Python Mobile Apps with Kivy

Are you keen to create Smartphone and tablet apps but don't want abandon Python?

Well you can with Kivy.

Led by professional software developer team the Kivy community has developed a cross-platform, open source Python library with support for multi-touch interfaces.

Kivy is 100% free to use under an MIT license (previous to version 1.7.2 it was LGPL 3). So you can also use it for commercial purposes.

Kivy code runs unchanged on all supported platforms, namely Linux, Windows, Android plus Apple's OS X and iOS. It has a reputation for stability, a well documented API and a how-to-get-started programming guide.

Many native inputs and protocols are supported by Kivy such as WM_Touch, WM_Pen, Mtdev, Linux Kernel HID, TUIO plus Mac OS X Trackpad and Magic Mouse. And there's also a multi-touch mouse simulator.

The toolkit includes over 20 coder-extensible widgets, with elements written in C using Cython for performance.

Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) acceleration is built-in thanks to a graphics engine built over OpenGL ES 2 and incorporating a fast graphics pipeline.

The code example below (taken from the Kivy website) illustrates the Kivy app basics:

from kivy.app import App
from kivy.uix.button import Button

class TestApp(App):
  def build(self):
    return Button(text='Hello World')

TestApp().run()

More Raspberry Pi Python Coding Tutorials

 

Apple vs Samsung Design Battle

In the battle between Apple and Samsung to design the next round of mobile devices, wearable tech, multi-platform operating systems and user-experience interfaces who will come out on top?

If it was a numbers game Samsung would win hands down.

Samsung has six Korean R&D centres plus more than a dozen others in America, India, Russia and other strategic locations around the world, including a strong European base in countries such as the UK, Poland and Finland.

These Samsung centres employ over 1,000 designers who work with advanced materials, user interfaces, graphics, digital media, printing, communications, cloud-computing and, of course, hardware and software engineering.

In stark contrast Apple employs less that 20 designers. They are housed in a single, super-secure R&D centre built into the heart of its head quarters building. So secure in fact that only Tim Cooke and few other top executives are allowed entry.

Samsung is said to lead the world in digital photography research. And its chip designs are so good even Apple sources the processors for its iOS devices from Samsung.

Samsung R&D labs developed the Galaxy Note range of smartphones and tablets. Devices which offer fast and smooth multi-tasking, multi-windowed interfaces, along with the much admired S-Pen technology. Innovations that are unmatched by others, including anything in Apple's product line.

And Samsung isn't afraid to invest when in-house innovations don't meet its own high quality standards. For example it is reportedly in talks to acquire Nuance, the accepted world leader in voice recognition technology.

Interestingly, Nuance technology also underpins Apple's Siri - for the time being at least.

Read more Apple and Samsung analysis posts.

Apple To Launch Liquidmetal Products?

Apple seems to be close to announcing new products based on brand new materials.

This June Jonathan Ive himself dropped hints about new product materials when he said ...

"I would love to talk about future stuff - there are materials we haven't worked in before. I've been working on this stuff for a few years now. Tim is fundamentally involved in pushing into these new areas and into these new materials."

Back in June 2012 I wrote an magazine article about liquidmetal material science, Atakan Peker, the Liquidmetal Technologies company and Apple's interest in this technology.

Two years later, almost to the day, it seems this might finally be the year Apple brings Liquidmetal into its product line.

Whatever Jonathan Ive is cooking up in his super-secret Apple design studio, chances are we'll find out soon.

Read more analysis posts about Apple.

Apple's Swift Language - The Wrong Direction

So, Apple has a brand new coding language to supplant it's ageing Objective-C.

Swift certainly is a much needed replacement and it solves numerous flexibility and performance roadblocks faced by Objective-C developers.

Yet it's a move in the wrong direction. Times have changed.

These days developers wish to make their own decisions about languages and tools. They favour standard-based technology that's platform-independent. And they like to get involved by suggesting new features or even writing their own enhancements.

Swift is another proprietary language attempting to lock developers into a platform. One that is unlikely to attract the open source coding community. And one that's more likely to alienate some current members of the Objective-C tribe.

A much better solution would be take a popular language and add it the Xcode toolbox. Maybe something similar to Microsoft's TypeScript language for instance.

Nevertheless, there was a encouraging note in the WWDC keynote announcements. The new Interactive Playground in Xcode 6 shows plenty of promise. Great tools do turn developer's heads - often much more easily than a new language.

Interactive Playground's features still might not make a huge difference in attracting new iOS and OS X developers. But I'd expect similar features to appear in Microsoft, Google and many open source community offerings soon.

For example, there may be refinements to the similar, and already well received, IPython Notebook initiative.

Read more analysis posts about Apple.

Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney

The appeal of this multi-faceted book extends to marketing folks, product designers, budding entrepreneurs and anyone curious about how Apple came to be the most valued company in the world.

It works as a narrative on Apple's history, with an extended timeline compared with rival books, and includes a detailed look at the formation of Pixar and it's day-to-day activities. Historical information is blended with analysis of the single-minded focus, marketing methods, design practices and perfectionist approach that made Apple the company it is today.

Threaded throughout are tales of the man himself and how he shaped the company right from the very beginning. While it certainly isn't intended to be chronological biographical study of Jobs, it is nevertheless full of interesting facts and anecdotes.

His religious devotion to perfection is evident in every chapter. Examples include boxing of the original Macintosh in 1984, meticulous attention to screw heads, precise lighting arrangements for Apple's onstage announcements and the internal layout of the high-street stores.

Of course, Jobs needed a world-class team of people around him to achieve such great things. Each individual was invariably handpicked, lured by Jobs's vision and cajoled by his undoubted charm. Yet they needed to share his passion, adjust to his individualistic work practices, weather his fierce outbursts, cope with his often overbearing attention to detail, and handle the relentless pressure to deliver nothing less than perfection.

The book's smooth narrative style and flow makes for an enjoyable read. Nevertheless, I'd like to have seen more insights from Jobs himself. The majority of the views expressed come from employees and associates, which aren't the same as listening in on his own thoughts. In addition, the reverence given to Jobs and his methods means we miss out on a more balanced view of what it was really like to work for one of the most influential characters of the computing age.

Read more Apple analysis posts.

Liquidmetal

Liquidmetal is a fascinating material from a group of alloys often referred to as amorphous metals or metallic alloys.

They have a non-crystalline structure, just like glass, and exhibit similar shape forming characteristics while retaining conductive properties.

The potential for this new material is enormous (as you can see from my article extracts below):

At first glance a liquidmetal alloy looks similar to stainless steel, albeit with a slightly different tone and hue. The exact colour depends on the alloy's specific composition.

However, hold it in your hand and you'll notice a distinctly warmer feel than with metal. Straight from a casting mold or die, liquidmetal objects exhibit a smooth mirror-like finish. But satin or brushed finishes are also possible. 

The key attributes are super strength and resilience, high scratch and corrosion resistance, and an ability to be precision cast into complex shapes. It's a very attractive combination.

In contrast plastics are easy to shape, but simply aren't strong enough. Metals have the strength, but complex shapes are difficult to create. And glass, despite its malleability and beauty, is just too fragile.

The hardness and strength-to-weight ratio of a liquidmetal alloy are particularly impressive. Compositions containing zirconium are stronger than aerospace-grade titanium alloys, and on a par with the very latest high-strength steels and specialised composite materials.

Some manufacturers have already experimented with liquidmetal cases. One such case enabled SanDisk's Cruzer Titanium USB flash drives to withstand crush pressures of over 2,000 pounds. SanDisk chose the same material for some of their 200-series Sansa flash-based MP3 players. While Nokia's Vertu Ascent mobile phone also featured a liquidmetal case.

With such a high strength-to-weight ratio liquidmetal is extremely attractive to aerospace designers and racing engineers. These industries have the motivation, money and skills to make rapid progress in both material science and manufacturing techniques.

The impressive strength, combined with liquidmetal's elastic nature (it's many times springier than steel), makes it ideal for all kinds of sporting equipment. Examples include golf club faces, tennis racket frames and skis.

Read more Apple analysis posts.

Apple's iWallet

In Micro Mart magazine issue 1203 I investigate if Apple are about to enter the mobile payment arena with an iWallet product.

The article focuses on a couple of Apple patents for a virtual SIM and an iPhone-based cashless payment and management system, which also includes multiple card account administration via iTunes.

Here's an extract from the article:

Apple's latest iWallet-type patent is a comprehensive piece of work. Published under the guise of 'Parental Controls' it incorporates numerous iPhone-style apps screen drawings, associated operational descriptions and banking interfaces.

The patent defines an extensive and flexible list of transaction control options. All controls can be applied by a primary account holder on behalf of other subsidiary account holders, such as for your children for example.

As you'd expect there are single transaction and daily spending limits, just as you'd find with the current range of NFC-enabled credit cards. However, with Apple's iWallet scenario you'll also be able to set times of day, add specific merchants, exclude certain products (such as alcohol or tobacco) and even define geographic boundaries (which will access the phone's geo-location information).

In addition, mobile communications are used to send rule violation alerts and purchase authorisation requests to the parent account holder. An authorisation request can even have different timeout limits, depending on whether it's an in-person or online transaction that's being performed.

Primary account holders can also define automatic credit top-ups schedules, such as a small daily allowance or a monthly lump sum. And, of course, all purchases will be tracked for subsequent online viewing.

Read more Apple analysis posts.