Apple is very anti-consumer, locking devices down, using planned obsolescence, fighting hard against movements for more open and fairer market practices and standards (e.g. switching to the standard USB-C port, allowing third-party app stores, exploiting developers releasing software on their platforms).
Or as I tell my Apple-philic tech friends: your devices are a single year of flat revenue away from user-hostile decisions.
At the end of the day, Apple exists to make money and keep shareholders happy.
If the business stops growing organically, do you really think they're going to benevolently use the massive control they have over their own platform?
"Apple" isn't privacy-focused. Their marketing strategy is currently privacy-focused and their economics currently permit them to be.
It doesn’t really seem like humorous hyperbole, though. It’s currently just factually incorrect. And it’s in your power to fix it, especially if you agree now in retrospect!
Not sure I can change the submission anymore. I am happy with the title as it is for my own blog, it just created some irritation here.
I am not a native speaker, so my interpretation might be wrong, but I tried to evoke the semi-serious but good-natured "You went to the bakery? You better brought me a snack as well!" meaning with "better have", not the "must have" meaning.
Ugh, quite annoying. My next phone might be an Android (instead of the current iPhone), and I was looking forward to returning to Nova Launcher, after having used it many years ago as my favorite launcher. This feels like a big no-go now.
What are other good customizable launchers on Android nowadays?
Much less popular but I switched to Kvaesitso from Nova about a month ago and it's been amazing and it's open source. Much more opinionated than Nova but it matched how I used Nova so I really enjoy it.
I've been using lawnchair as a launcher that is open source (apache) since the first news broke months when the previous dev/owner warned people what was coming, and it works just fine. Not quite as versatile as Nova Launcher, but with 100% less adware now that the new adware company is running up in people with a bait and switch.
Early on, Lawnchair implemented a blacklist to hide apps they deemed “bad”. They only removed it after lots of protest from users. That has “burned” this launcher for me.
I tried Lawnchair out when figuring out what I was going to replace Nova with. I didn't end up choosing it, but if I had known they tried to do this (even if it only made it to the alpha channel) I wouldn't have even bothered to try it out.
I'm certainly not going to say nobody should use it.
But I assume the dev then is the dev now. That he was OK introducing something like that, even 9 years ago, tells me that his values and my values are very far apart.
I did actually evaluate it (before I knew this history) and it didn't meet my needs, so I chose something else purely on technical grounds anyway.
I used Nova for years and went through this research before, having tested many alternatives. Octopi is what you're looking for. It can do pretty much everything Nova did for me and more besides. They also update often with improvements and fixes!
Lawnchair newest beta, though they still didnt fix years old bug with dark/black font on dark/black background in folders/drawer
also resizing/padding widgets ain't as good as Nova, but for sure much better than Octopi which is completely weird, tried yesterday, chaotic settings, can't even disable background picture for dock
switched yesterday to Lawnchair from Nova after 10+ years, seems OK besides those few quirks, but still keeping Nova as backup, will see after 2 weeks testing how is the stability, if I can remove even nova backup
I paid for "Square Home" a couple years ago and I'm very happy with it. It's highly customizable. The Windows Phone style layout probably isn't for everyone but it works well for me.
Same! And I feel weird about it. The only issue I have is sometimes the task switcher hangs or fails and I can't easily switch tasks, but aside from that it ticks a lot of boxes.
Yeah, I used to have an issue where it would repeatedly request accessibility permissions even though they were already granted. But I haven't seen that one in months and haven't noticed any other glitches or bugs whatsoever.
I like how completely adjustable the home screen grid is (icon size, number of rows, number of columns, whether or not to allow sub-grid arrangement, whether to have vertical or horizontal page layout).
I like the number of shortcut gestures available (tap home on home screen, swipe up/down, two finger swipe up/down, double tap, double tap + swipe up/down, pinch in/out), and that they're all completely remappable to launch any installed app, or installed app quick action, or trigger any of like a dozen launcher actions (like opening the app drawer, opening the notification shade, locking the screen, etc).
I like how the dock can be swiped up to show a second (or, if you want, third or fourth etc) row of apps in like a "mini app drawer" just for things I use often and want there instead of picking a page where they live.
I like the widgets that it ships with (I use the combo clock + weather one).
I like that I can have the app drawer organize alphabetically (or not, if I wanted).
I like that I can turn off pretty much anything that I don't want (the news feed page, especially, but also you can have almost any of the launcher UI elements hidden by default).
And it's stable, has no ads, and nearly no pop-ups. It just lets me set what I want and then gets out of the way and works 99.9% of the time.
It's just... It's Microsoft Launcher, is the only thing.
I was also surprised to not see Photomator included. Wouldn’t it perfectly complement the lineup? I hadn’t thought of such a pessimistic interpretation, but now I’m worried as well …
I think Apple killed Aperture primarily because it was confusing to have iPhoto and Aperture with largely overlapping workflows. Aperture had the loupe view, and side by side comparison stuff, saved color grading tools (I think?), sure, but it wasn’t differentiated enough to justify a Pro designation. I think it makes more sense for Photomator features to be absorbed into Photos… and maybe Photos gets some new Pixelmator integrations if you have it, for quick touch ups / enhancement type things.
On the other hand, Final Cut / iMovie will exist side by side because it’s truly a basic vs Pro situation.
Not a product manager at Apple, of course, but this is what logically seems to make sense.
Uff, I sure hope you are wrong! I don’t want to use the iCloud library for photos, but have my photos available as digital files elsewhere on the ssd. Of course, your prediction makes more sense from Apple’s standpoint, unfortunately.
I do like the convenience of iCloud, but totally agree that having them safe elsewhere is necessary. I’ve been pretty bad about keeping solid, non-iCloud backups of my photos. I definitely need to be more proactive about it.
Not to a professional, no. But this isn’t iMovie vs Final Cut. Aperture was only slightly above where iPhoto was going in capability. They should have raised the iPhoto/Photos bar a lot more to get back to where Aperture was, though.
I mean, the friendly way to kill off the differences between Aperture and Photos would have been to add all the missing workflow stuff to Photos before killing Aperture. Photos did not get lift-and-stamp edits until late 2022, years after Aperture was discontinued, and it isn't as good as the corresponding feature in Aperture was. Also, it would have been cool if the Photos import from Aperture library had ever worked, even a little bit. I keep an external hard drive around with my old Aperture library because I know it contains photos that Photos.app still hasn't pulled in correctly.
I’m surprised to hear about the bugs. I’ve been using Orion on iOS very happily for a week or so now, and haven’t encountered any issues. I’m actually close to writing a praising blog post for it!
Most of their other posts on the front page also aren’t exactly charismatic (or plain childish). A good early warning sign to stay away from that place!
Have you ever tried a launcher as powerful as Raycast? I can only recommend it. I use it for quick calculations, currency conversions, file lookups, translations, looking up http status codes, joining meetings, finding emojis, quickly checking my calendar, etc. etc. – so, perhaps a singular function might not warrant a launcher, but the sum of functions and keyboard-centric UI make it very valuable for me in my daily workflows.
I wouldn’t even use AI to generate image descriptions (because it doesn’t have enough context to convey the meaning, aside from being wrong many times). Designers and developers should see it as part of their trade to build inclusive products, not try to patch it up as an afterthought with Accessibility overlays or AI-based “fixes”.
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