My iPad Wishlist

Last month, I wrote about why my current MacBook Pro may be my last Mac. To summarize: even though I love the Mac, I really enjoy using iOS and am betting that in 3-4 years, when I’m ready to upgrade my computer, the new model of iPad Pro will be able to fit all of my computing needs. Yesterday, Ryan Christoffel over at MacStories wrote a post entitled “What I Wish the iPad Would Gain from the Mac.” He had some good ideas; I particularly agreed with his requests for multiple instances of the same app and persistent background privileges for apps. Here are some other things on my iPad wishlist:

Time Machine backups

Cloud backups are great and all, but who wants to put all their eggs in one basket? I sure don’t. That’s why I’d like to be able to backup my iPad by connecting it directly to an external hard drive. Sure, you can connect an iPad to your Mac and back it up that way…but if the point is to go Macless, then the iPad needs its own independent solution for creating physical backups.

Default apps, file handling, etc.

On my Mac, I have Safari set to automatically download files to my Desktop. I’d love an option in Safari for iOS to just download all files, no matter what type they are, to some designated folder in the Files app. These downloads should be displayed in a magical pane called a “download manager,” with fancy progress bars and “time remainings” and the whole kit and caboodle. Then, from Files, I should be able to tap on a file and it will automatically open in a default app of my choosing (unless I choose a different app from a menu of available apps).

Yes, I just described exactly how that works on a Mac.

Editing a file with multiple applications on iOS feels like a game of hot potato: the file gets passed from app to app, but nobody wants to own it and God forbid it “land” anywhere. Coming from the Mac, I like my files to have a home outside any one application. Files.app attempts to achieve this, but the existence of app-specific folders confuses things. It’s as if the transition from “let’s abstract away the file system” to “okay…I guess we can show you some of the files” was never quite completed. I don’t care about accessing hidden system files or anything, I just want Apple to firmly decide what mental model they want users to have when it comes to file management on iOS, and then use the basic principles of design to clearly communicate that.

iPad-only design paradigms/UI controls

Size classes aren’t good enough. There, I said it. The iPad needs more than just UISplitViewController: it needs more UI controls that are tailor-made for it. It needs its own coherent design language that is an extension of the iPhone’s: similar in spirit, but different. All of this needs to take into account the different ways that people use an iPad: on their lap with no hardware peripherals, with a keyboard, with an Apple Pencil or other stylus, etc.

Most importantly, Apple needs to lead the way on this with its own first party pro software. I think they should start with Logic, and charge a hefty price for it. That would be helpful.

And okay, can we talk about the fact that the 12.9″ iPad Pro has a resolution of 2048 x 2732 and still only shows, what, six app icons per home screen page? (an exaggeration, I know…but good grief!)

Multi-tasking improvements

I would love the ability to have some persistent “spaces” on my iPad of some kind. In other words, a set of side-by-side apps that always remained a pair no matter what. For instance, I’m imagining a space labeled “podcasting” that showed a recording app, a chat room app, and a slide-over with notes, or something. An app would be able to be associated with multiple spaces. I think this approach would fit a lot better with the way most people work.

Xcode, but probably not Xcode exactly

The last thing I really need in order to live the iPad Life is a way to develop apps on it. With wireless debugging now a reality, and a rumored API that would bring some cohesiveness to Mac and iOS development (I’m betting that’ll be Swift-only), a full-fledged IDE for iPad seems more possible and more likely than ever. I doubt it’ll support Objective C, and it’ll probably push Storyboards more than ever, and I’ll love it so so much.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure all of these things have been mentioned by other people a zillion times, but they’re also the things that are most important to me, personally. And that’s why you read this, right?

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Making App Store screenshots involving a photo library is so hard. I always just use my own pictures, but they lack a certain polish. I could buy stock photos and put fake Live Photo badges on top them, but…ugh. I’d prefer a genuine screenshot, with real Live Photos.

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Just completed two productive, frustration-free hours of writing code and now I remember why I enjoy this so much. The past week was full of weird bugs and lots of wasted time, but this feeling makes it worth it, at least to me. ?

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In today’s edition of “Becky’s Dumb Programming Mistakes,” it’s a miracle you can even scrub videos at all in Snapthread because I forgot to actually hook up these two actions to the scrubber.
Screenshot of beginScrubbing and endScrubbiing functions

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I also discovered a fun error message in the debugger about something called JVTLib that ended in at LEAST eight exclamation points. Something like: “Bit stream parsing error!!!!!!!!” (Sent with Raining Hellfire ☄️)

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Hello. I just realized, after attempting to figure out a bug for nearly 5 hours (spread over the past couple days), that the problem only occurs in the Simulator. So if anyone is looking for me, just listen carefully for muffled sobs and murmurs about decoder errors…??

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A moment ago I was writing a switch statement and read the regular Xcode warning as “Switch must be exhausting.”

Guess it’s time to go to bed!

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A hearty “THANKS!” to everyone who has sent in Snapthread beta feedback so far. It looks like I have a lot of work to do! ? I think I narrowed down the cause of most of the “hanging/freezing with no progress” problems to some threading issues. I still have a sort of incomplete understanding of multithreading, but I’m confident I can get it sorted. Anyway, I’ll get back to you all as soon as I can. Thanks again!

Snapthread 1.5 Beta Test

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: ask people to beta test my app! If you’re interested in being a part of my very first beta test, please either send an email to feedback@beckyhansmeyer.com or DM me on Twitter (@bhansmeyer). All I need to know is what email address you’d like me to send a TestFlight invite to.

I’m hoping to have a build ready for testing sometime this weekend. In the meantime, here’s some more info about this version of Snapthread!

What’s New in Snapthread 1.5 (Build 26…probably):

  • New icon and slightly tweaked design
  • Support for landscape Live Photos and videos
  • Now you can change your final video’s aspect ratio  to any one of the following: 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 (and you can switch between them and preview them on the fly)
  • A new settings screen allows you to turn on auto-saving (which saves your video automatically when you hit “Export”) and letterboxing
  • Trim videos

What Still Needs Work

  • If you’ve already trimmed a video and go back to change it, the trimming handles don’t reflect your previous trimmed portion.
  • You can’t adjust the crop rectangle of a video yet. So if you select a 1:1 ratio, important things will probably be cut off.

I’m really looking forward to getting version 1.5 out in the world, but I want to make sure I get some of the kinks worked out first. Thanks in advance to all my beta testers!

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Xcode should, by default, generate app icons for all sizes from a single artwork file. That would eliminate such an obvious pain point for app developers and designers.

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One of my goals for 2017 was to make $1000 from selling apps on the App Store. I didn’t come close (~$200), so my goal for 2018 is just to work my tail off and continue to improve. It’s all I can do! That said, I’ll be looking for beta testers for Snapthread soon. ???

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So uh…anybody know how to achieve a heavily blurred background effect when letterboxing a video using AVFoundation, similar to what Apple does in the “Memories” videos it creates? I need to figure out a solution that will work for a bunch of clips merged together. ?