Halide è un’applicazione che rimpiazza la fotocamera di default dell’iPhone, introducendo funzionalità aggiuntive e avanzate, riuscendo a renderle usabili e semplici anche ad utenti non esperti di fotografia (come il sottoscritto).

Nell’ultimo aggiornamento, che la rende compatibile con iPhone X, gli sviluppatori di Halide hanno aggiunto il supporto a RAW, un formato che cattura e conserva un numero superiori di informazioni per ogni fotografia e permette, di conseguenza, più libertà durante la fase di editing di uno scatto:

Processing RAW files is a lot of work, so that’s why Apple saves the processed file as a JPEG or HEIC. These require much less space, and they’re much faster to load. However, they do this by throwing out information that your monitor doesn’t need, and details that your eyes can’t see.

When you shoot JPEG, you really need to get the photo perfect at the time you take it. With RAW and its extra data, you can easily fix mistakes, and you get a lot more room to experiment.

What kind of data? RAW files store more information about detail in the highlights (the bright parts) and the shadows (the dark parts) of an image. Since you often want to ‘recover’ a slightly over or under-exposed photo, this is immensely useful.

Max Rudberg propone diversi accorgimenti per gestirlo al meglio, e farsene una ragione. Perché, del resto, Apple non vuole che lo si nasconda:

Apple writes in the HIG: “Don’t attempt to hide the device’s rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

In the Designing for iPhone X video, posted by Apple after the X’s announcement, Mike Stern says: “Your app or game should always fill the display that it runs on. Placing black bars at the top or bottom of the screen makes your app feel small, cramped, and inconsistent with other apps on iPhone X”.

Come probabilmente avete già letto, Apple in Cina ha rimosso dal proprio App Store i VPN non autorizzati dal governo cinese. Non penso che opporsi sarebbe servito a molto: credo sia plausibile assumere che avrebbe portato o a un veto di vendita sull’iPhone, o a un blocco completo dei servizi web di Apple.

A questo punto, però, mi sembra ovvio che l’App Store rappresenti un problema: permette a governi di Paesi meno democratici di esercitare e forzare un controllo sull’OS. Come sottolinea John Gruber:

The App Store was envisioned as a means for Apple to maintain strict control over the software running on iOS devices. But in a totalitarian state like China (or perhaps Russia, next), it becomes a source of control for the totalitarian regime.

Non credo succederà — porterebbe parte delle vendite fuori dall’App Store — ma Apple dovrebbe implementare su iOS una soluzione simile a Gatekeeper su macOS.

Tyler Cowen sottolinea come nel rendere l’iPhone rivoluzionario abbiano giocato un ruolo rilevante anche varie e diverse innovazioni fatte di atomi; dai materiali utilizzati, al touch screen — importanti tanto quanto le app e il software:

The iPhone is behind the scenes a triumph of mining science, with a wide variety of raw materials and about 34 billion kilograms (75 billion pounds) of mined rock as an input to date, as discussed by Brian Merchant in his new and excellent book “The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone.” A single iPhone has behind it the production of 34 kilos of gold ore, with 20.5 grams (0.72 ounces) of cyanide used to extract the most valuable parts of the gold.

Especially impressive as a material is the smooth touch-screen, and the user’s ability to make things happen by sliding, swiping, zooming and pinching it — the “multitouch” function. That advance relied upon particular materials, as the screen is chemically strengthened, made scrape-resistant and embedded with sensitive sensors. Multitouch wasn’t new, but Apple understood how to build it into a highly useful product.

David Pogue:

A few years ago, backstage at a conference, I spotted a blind woman using her phone. The phone was speaking everything her finger touched on the screen, allowing her to tear through her apps. My jaw hit the floor. After years of practice, she had cranked the voice’s speed so high, I couldn’t understand a word it was saying.

And here’s the kicker: She could do all of this with the screen turned off. Her phone’s battery lasted forever.

Secondo un articolo del Wall Street Journal i prossimi iPhone abbandoneranno la porta proprietaria Lightning a favore di una porta standard USB-C.

Gruber non ne è convinto — e ha persuaso anche me che non succederà:

If Apple had any plans to switch from Lightning to USB-C, why wouldn’t they have switched last year with the iPhone 7, when they started making tens of millions of pairs of Lightning ear buds? Why did they put a Lightning port on the AirPods case? My expectation has been that iPhones will neverswitch to USB-C — that Apple would stick with Lightning until they can do away with external ports entirely.

Il New York Times esplora l’entità delle operazioni di Apple in Cina – e il coinvolgimento del governo cinese per aiutare Foxconn, con sovvenzioni e infrastruttura, a mettere in piedi la più grande fabbrica di iPhone al mondo:

It all centers on Zhengzhou, a city of six million people in an impoverished region of China. Running at full tilt, the factory here, owned and operated by Apple’s manufacturing partner Foxconn, can produce 500,000 iPhones a day. Locals now refer to Zhengzhou as “iPhone City.”

The local government has proved instrumental, doling out more than $1.5 billion to Foxconn to build large sections of the factory and nearby employee housing. It paved roads and built power plants.

It helps cover continuing energy and transportation costs for the operation. It recruits workers for the assembly line. It pays bonuses to the factory for meeting export targets.

Steve Jobs, nel 2003 al New York Times:

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

John Gruber:

You need to recognize a Porsche 911 as a 911. An iPhone needs to look like an iPhone. The design needs to evolve, not transform. The thing to keep in mind is that the iPhone itself, what it looks like in your hand, is the embodiment of the iPhone brand. There is nothing printed on the front face of an iPhone because there doesn’t need to be. The Apple logo is the company’s logo. The iPhone’s logo is the iPhone itself. […]

A new Rolex needs to look like a Rolex. A Leica needs to look like a Leica. A new Coca-Cola bottle needs to look like a Coca-Cola bottle.

Ben Bajarin:

Similarly, sports car designs are iconic. You know a Porsche 911 when you see one, no matter what year it was made. I feel similarly about Apple sticking with certain design language, and thus establishing it as iconic. Iconic car designs have slight variations year to year, but never dramatic departures from the iconic look. I feel that Apple is on a similar design path.

Il design dell’iPhone è iconico — riconoscibile istantaneamente come un iPhone. Dovremmo aspettarci che cambi con sempre minore frequenza, e che Apple lo migliori con cambiamenti graduali e minori piuttosto che rivisitandolo completamente.

L’iPhone 7 Plus ha due fotocamere, a differente lunghezza focale: 28mm e 56mm. 56mm, come nota astramael, è molto simile al campo visivo di un umano — per questa ragione la lunghezza focale più comune su una DSLR è di 50mm:

35mm is an established standard for general photography. It was natural for Apple to target roughly that focal length in 2007, but since then the iPhone camera has mostly featured even wider lenses. Phone thickness limited focal length, and perhaps wide lenses are favored by customers as well. Then came iPhone 7 Plus. The dual camera system has significant implications for the iPhone as a photographic tool. I was not sampled an iPhone 7 Plus for this article. Comparison photos were taken using a camera set to 28mm and 56mm equivalent focal lengths.

Previously the iPhone had a significant limitation as a camera. It was wide angle only. Some marvelous photos are taken with a wide lens; many are not. According to ExploreCams the most common focal length used to take photos with DSLRs is 50mm. The most commonly used prime lens in DSLR systems is a fast 50mm. This is not an accident. 50mm is a well-placed compromise between wide and narrow focal lengths. It’s a very “human size” lens in terms of field of view, and it lets you isolate subjects effectively. Just as with 35mm in the first iPhone, it’s no surprise that Apple picked something around 50mm for their longer lens.

La nuova fotocamera funziona peggio in scenari a bassa luminosità, e in generale risulta meno stabile. Però funziona meglio nei ritratti e, assieme alla fotocamera da 28mm, permette all’iPhone di generare una mappa di profondità di una foto: essendo le due lenti a pochi millimetri di distanza fra loro, vedono una scena da una prospettiva leggermente diversa. L”iPhone può quindi sapere cosa si trova davanti e cosa dietro.

Apple usa per il momento questa capacità solo per l’effetto bokeh, ma secondo Ben Thompson è il primo tassello per una fotocamera più avanzata, che apra scenari più interessanti nella realtà virtuale e aumentata:

Bokeh, though, is only the tip of the iceberg: what Apple didn’t say was that they may be releasing the first mass-market virtual reality camera. The same principles that make artificial bokeh possible also go into making imagery for virtual reality headsets. Of course you probably won’t be able to use the iPhone 7 Plus camera in this way — Apple hasn’t released a headset, for one — but when and if they do, the ecosystem will already have been primed, and you can bet FaceTime VR would be an iPhone seller.

Secondo il New York Times, quello che manca al nuovo iPhone è un nuovo design. Non per una ragione specifica, ma tanto per. Siccome il design è simile a quello introdotto nel 2014, va cambiato. Fine dell’arguta argomentazione.

Sottoscrivo le parole di John Gruber a riguardo:

There is a large contingent of pundits who apparently would be more excited about a new iPhone that looked entirely different but had the exact same components as the iPhone 6S than they are by the actual iPhones 7, which are shaped like the 6S but have amazing new components. I don’t get that mindset at all. It’s like being a car pundit and judging the new Porsche 911 with a “meh” because it looks like the previous 911, and never even considering what it’s like to actually drive the new car.

Non aiuta il modo in cui Apple nomina gli iPhone. Oramai ci si aspetta un cambiamento di design con i modelli senza “S”, e degli aggiornamenti minori per i modelli con la “S”. iPhone S = vecchio design, iPhone leggermente rinnovato. iPhone senza S = nuovo design, innovazione.

In realtà molte delle funzionalità più rilevanti di iOS — Siri e Touch ID, per dirne due — hanno visto la luce in un modello “S”. Come scrive Ken Segall, forse sarebbe il caso di abbandonare questa nomenclatura: cambiare design quando è necessario, invece che ogni due anni, e dissociare l’aspetto esteriore dal numero e dalla portata dei cambiamenti introdotti.

Did I mention how much I loathe this naming scheme?

From a marketing standpoint, Apple has simply been shooting itself in the foot every other year, muting expectations by putting an S on the box.

Even when an S model introduces a breakthrough feature, it comes in the context of “this is an off-year.” I’m trying to think of any marketer who has ever chosen such a course before, but I’m coming up blank.

Le novità annunciate al WWDC relative alla gestione delle foto su iOS sono apprezzabili ma, come scrive The Next Web, non risolvono il problema che molti di noi hanno nella gestione della nostra libreria fotografica. Apple ancora la tratta come una collezione di momenti memorabili, unici, speciali e belli da rivivere, ma la realtà è che per molti di noi questi (rari) momenti sono sommersi dall’uso quotidiano che facciamo della fotocamera: per prendere un appunto, per ricordarci di un oggetto che abbiamo visto in un negozio, per salvare uno scontrino, etc.

Usiamo la fotocamera non solo per catturare un episodio da ricordare ma anche per catturare informazioni — perché se è vero che ci sono app specifiche che ci aiutano a farlo, la fotocamera è il modo più immediato di appuntarsi qualcosa.

Come suggerisce The Next Web, sarebbe bello se Apple ci aiutasse a organizzare questa collezione disordinata di appunti che si mischia assieme alle foto — categorizzandoli (così come offre il riconoscimento facciale, perché non offrire un riconoscimento delle ricevute, dei biglietti da visita, di fogli e post-it, etc.) o aiutandoci a cancellarli dopo un certo tempo:

I’d like it if Apple would add some actual intelligence to how it handles photos. All optional, of course. As soon as you take a photo the camera could detect what kind of photo it is and label it as ‘Receipts’, ‘Notes’ or ‘Expire after 7 days’. This could be a pop-up that would float there over the photo you just took. With one finger you can confirm or change a label, or just ignore it when it is right.